Trump Tariff Hurts USB Flash Drive Market

Yes, there is a tariff on USB flash drives coming from China.

Two tariffs have been assigned to the USB flash drive category when importing product from China since 2020:

• February of 2020 — a 7.5% tariff was enacted by Trump
• January of 2025 — a 10.0% tariff was enacted by Trump

The total tariff amount is currently 17.5% for all USB flash drives imported from China into the United States.

Many economists argue tariffs are harmful to the U.S. economy because they raise costs for consumers and businesses while disrupting global trade. U.S. manufacturers rely heavily on imported semiconductors, steel, and electronic parts. When input costs rise, American companies lose competitiveness, jobs are threatened, and growth slows.

Is this bad? Mostly YES and a little no.

Yes — because a tariff functions as a tax. No matter how you spin it, the cost is passed down to the consumer.

No — because tariffs are designed to reduce the trade deficit by nudging U.S. suppliers to manufacture locally. But in reality, this “reshoring” rarely works in industries with globalized supply chains.

Retaliation is another risk. China, or other partners, can respond with tariffs of their own, hurting U.S. exporters. The cycle becomes less about strategy and more about political chest-thumping.

For example, no major players — Kingston, Western Digital, Nexcopy, or Micron — manufacture flash memory in the United States. All rely on contract factories abroad. Even if final assembly happened in the U.S., NAND memory (85% of the bill of materials) would still need to be imported. In practice, it’s cheaper to pay the tariff than to rebuild the entire supply chain domestically.

Tariffs: An Old Playbook

Tariffs have been around for centuries as a blunt tool to raise revenue and protect domestic industries. But global trade has moved on. Free trade agreements and rules enforced by groups like the WTO have proven more effective for long-term growth. The Trump 2025 administration’s reliance on broad tariffs underscores a lack of modern trade strategy, leaving U.S. consumers holding the bill.

What can you do?

Not much. No U.S. factory is producing USB flash drives, and shipping through third countries like Mexico or Taiwan costs more than paying the tariff. Consumers can’t “game” the system because U.S. Customs enforces thresholds aggressively.

A couple notes:

• Shipments valued under $800 are exempt from tariffs
• But $800 is too small for manufacturers to realistically benefit
• The Harmonization Code for USB Flash Memory is 8523.51.00.00

U.S. flash drive sales are estimated at $5.47 billion for 2024. Even if the U.S. market was just 1% of that figure, the sheer volume makes “under $800 shipments” impractical. Customs would catch on quickly to any attempt at breaking orders down.

Bottom line: tariffs on USB flash drives are here, and they hit end-users hardest. The only real way forward is through better trade policy and electing leaders who understand how to negotiate deals without defaulting to tariffs.

This original article was posted on the English GetUSB.info website at: Is There a Tariff on USB Flash Drives?

Review: USB-C cable tester by BLE caberQU

USB-C has firmly established itself as the universal connector standard, integrating data transfer, power delivery, and video output into a single interface. With so many cables on the market, knowing which ones truly deliver on their promises can be challenging. That’s where the BLE caberQU comes in, a great USB-C cable tester that provide all the details one would need.

We can break down the need to test USB-C cables into five categories; and it’s worth noting if you are going to spend good money on a device, monitor or other peripheral, isn’t it worth a bit effort to make sure the cable connecting it all works at the highest level?

The most important factor to consider is USB-C data transfer speed. Different USB-C cables can transfer data at different speeds. For instance, some are USB 2.0 (480 Mbps), while others might support USB 3.1 or USB 3.2, which can go up to 10 or 20 Gbps. Testing the cables makes sure you’re getting the right speed, especially when dealing with large files or using external drives.

The BLE caberQU performs great in its main functions. It provides a dependable way to test USB-C cables for data speed, charging power, and overall condition. The LED indicators give a clear and quick visual of the cable’s pin connections, making testing easier. The LCD screen goes further by showing detailed information about the data speed of the cable being tested.

The second most important category is Compatibility. Not all USB-C cables are created equally. Some might not be compatible with high-speed protocols like Thunderbolt 3 or 4, which can impact both data transfer rates and compatibility with devices like monitors or docks. The BLE caberQU provides a systematic way to determine the true connectivity protocol of the cable. Although some cables may give false positive results, it is recommended to test the cable multiple times for Compatibility to insure the BLE caberQU reports the correct value.

In the dramatic style of online media pumping the RSS feeds with USB juice jacking end of days, consider this satirical word salad.

The domain of USB juice jacking unfurls its potentially ugly head with an available open socket in the dark corner of an airport corridor. Both consumers and enterprise travels could run the high risk of an orchestrated series of pragmatic events leading to the downfall of one’s sanctuary… or could it? The bedrock principle here is that USB juice jacking grievous – but the true question, is it? Or is this all just media hype?

Consider these avenues to preserve the sanctity of your data and the haven of your device:

The Portable Paragon: Opting for a portable charger takes the sting out of the juice jacking quandary. By sidestepping public charging stations, you effectively dodge the peril. Anticipating the untimely depletion of batteries, especially during journeys, beckons the wisdom of an emergency charging repository. A small caveat: ensure this fortress is adequately fortified prior to your ventures, and that its compatible conduits stand ready.

The Cord-And-Plug Ballet: If the portable charger is but a distant memory, there’s a dance of cords and plugs that could spare you the dance with danger. Brandishing your personal USB cable and trusty outlet plug allows you to plug into a wall socket, rendering the jeopardy null. When sockets prove elusive, your own USB cord at a public station unfurls as an emergent bastion.

Taming the Data Hydrant: Enter the esoteric inner workings of USB cables, and you’ll uncover a binary nature – a power-bearing filament and a data-carrying cousin. The crux of juice jacking unravels through the latter. Presenting a savior: a USB cable that forsakes data aspirations. This averts the artifice. But do heed the fine print: scenarios beckon where data-hungry cables are indispensable – such as shuttle duties to the cloud. Be prepared for a multiplicity of cords and the vigilance to discern their roles.

Sentinel of Data: The data blocker, a digital sentinel of sorts, takes its stance here. It forms an impervious bulwark between your cord and the dubious charging station. A strategic interlude that both the cord and the data pins traverse. These wards negate the data transmission, while the coursing power remains uninterrupted. Similar to their data-agnostic counterparts, they preclude the ingress of malware and data subversion.

Mistrusting the Digital: “Trust” and “share data,” an innocent query from your device as you court a public charger. Swiftly recoil. Apple’s devices, astutely attuned to data traffic, wave a flag of caution. This prompts a swift retreat when encountered. Such a message signals an imposter and hints at the lurking specter of juice jacking.

The Ordeal of Juice Jacking in the Corporate Landscape

The saga of USB juice jacking, while impactful on personal devices, weaves a more perilous tapestry within corporate enclaves. Envision the cataclysm: a sprawling data breach, gestating within the confines of a juice jacking event. A corporate warrior connects their laboring device to a public charger, unwittingly offering a foothold. In an instant, cyber marauders could storm the ramparts of the employee’s corporate realm.

For the prudent corporation, a trinity of strategies beckons:

Enlighten the Digital Denizens: Infuse your workforce with the intricacies of juice jacking. Cultivate a cybersecurity ethos, emboldened by informed choices in the face of electronic deceit.

Outfitting the Expeditionary: Equip your corporate wanderers with data blockers – their digital exoskeletons against the lurking threats of public charging.

The Clarion Call of Vigilance: If suspicions of malware assail employees in the embrace of a public charging portal, mandate the clarion call for reporting. Swift response translates to remote data purging, a bulwark against further inroads into corporate dominion and the treacherous terrain of data breaches. Inculcate an understanding of the virtue of vigilance, even in the face of policy breaches, to circumvent further havoc.

In the quest to comprehend juice jacking, one often veers to extremes: a hyperawareness that presumes its omnipresence or a dismissive attitude that fuels complacency. Opting for the middle path, however, stands as the beacon of wisdom. Acknowledge the potential and attendant risks, and embrace a precautionary stance. Thus ensues a realm where both you and your workforce can replenish your devices without courting catastrophe.

This how to tutorial describes a simple way to check for bad sectors on a USB flash drive. The instructions below will also fix any bad sectors, if possible, during the scanning process.

A bad sector on a flash drive is a portion of memory on the flash drive which cannot be accessed, written to, or read from and therefore cannot be used. A bad sector on a flash drive sounds easy enough to diagnose, but it’s important to know there are two types of bad sectors: hard and soft.

Physical damage to a USB flash drive will create a hard bad sector. A hard bad sector cannot be repaired or fixed and is typically induced from physical abuse. A good example: leaving a flash drive in your pocket and it went through the wash, or the device was dropped and hit the ground is such a way, physical damage happened to the memory.

A soft bad sector on a flash drive are memory logic problems. A soft bad sector can occur from a software or data error during the write process. In lower quality flash drives, it is possible the incorrect firmware was written into the USB controller ROM and thus creates instability via soft bad sectors.

Bad sectors cannot be repaired; however soft bad sectors can be repaired.

The soft bad sectors can be fixed by using the CHKDSK utility in the Windows operating system. This same utility will also flag any hard bad sectors not to be used again, and of course not repaired.

Some signs of a bad sector on a flash drive include:

• Cannot read a file on the flash drive
• A file location is no longer available
• Unable to format the USB flash drive
• A disk read error occurs during operation

In our opinion, run the check disk one time to see if your issue is resolved, but if subsequent scans are required, we recommend discarding the flash drive to avoid further issues.

Running the chkdsk scan is really easy:

Insert flash drive to computer

Using Windows Explorer navigate to the drive letter

In the Explorer window type cmd and press enter

Once inside the command line utility type chkdsk d: /f /r /x and click Enter. NOTE: *The letter d represents the drive letter of the flash drive.

• The /f parameter tells CHKDSK to fix any errors it finds.
• The /r parameter tells Windows to repair/restore bad sectors (if possible).
• The /x parameter unmounts any “handles” to the drive or said another way, this step will not allow any other resource to access the flash drive during the scan.

With in a few minutes of downloading Rufus one can determine the software does not make a USB CD-ROM flash drive.

We confirmed this with another article we found on the web from GetUSB.info and they explained how to burn ISO to USB. What they concluded, and so did we, is that Rufus will extract the content of an ISO file and copy those files to the USB flash drive, but the Rufus software doesn’t change the configuration of the device, to that of a CD-ROM.

What started this quest was not wanting to make a bootable Windows flash drive, but rather, find a way to make a USB read-only so the data on the flash drive would not be removed or deleted.

In addition to having the USB read-only for the content, it also makes things impossible for a virus to jump onto the flash drive and spread. Given (my day job) my company doesn’t want a flash drive with our content and logo to be able to spread a virus, so the only solution we found was making sure the USB stick was read-only in the first place.

GetUSB.info article explains what Rufus does and also how to make a USB CD-ROM flash drive, the right way.

Why hardware write-protected USB drives are critical for Industrial Control Systems.

Honeywell’s recent cybersecurity report noted that 37% of threats are designed to spread via removable media, nearly doubling from 19% in 2020. That spike highlights how USB flash drives remain a weak link in Industrial Control Systems (ICS) if not properly managed.

Honeywell’s solution, Honeywell Forge, is software that monitors connected devices and flags risks [Ref:1]. Monitoring is useful, but it doesn’t prevent malware from getting in. Prevention requires the right kind of media in the first place.

Air-gapped systems and the USB problem

ICS environments are typically air-gapped—they’ve never touched the internet. Updates happen through portable storage, usually a USB flash drive. If that drive is compromised, malware bypasses all other defenses and lands directly in the control system. The only effective safeguard is a drive that is physically incapable of being infected while in transit.

Software tricks—like setting a read-only attribute with DISKPART or flipping registry rights—don’t cut it. Those methods are easy to reverse and offer little real protection against a determined attacker.

A hardware-level solution

The Lock License flash drive by Nexcopy takes a different approach. Its write protection is enforced at the hardware controller level. Unlike software locks, hardware-level controls cannot be undone with a few registry edits. This makes the device far more resistant to tampering or malware injection.

The Lock License design also balances usability. A content creator can temporarily unlock the drive with a password to write new data. Once disconnected, the drive automatically returns to its secure state: read-only. That means you can safely prepare update media in a trusted environment, then deploy it to an ICS without fear of the drive being altered along the way.

Final thought

It’s hard not to ask: why weren’t USB drives built like this from the beginning? For ICS, where uptime and safety are everything, a hardware write-protected flash drive isn’t just a convenience—it’s a necessity.

Why Windows shows the wrong USB volume name—and three ways to fix it.

On some Windows 10 systems, a USB flash drive displays the wrong volume label in File Explorer—even though the name is correct in Disk Management. In some cases, every connected USB device shows the same (incorrect) label. If you’re seeing this, there are three likely causes. Start with the simplest first.

Why enterprises are turning to hardware-based write protection for USB flash drives.

Data protection and cyber-security have become inseparable from day-to-day business operations. In this article, Greg Morris, CEO of Nexcopy Incorporated in Southern California, explores the opportunities enterprises have with write-protected USB technology.

November 18, 2020

As the global economy leans further into digitization, intellectual property and sensitive assets are increasingly shared in digital form. That shift comes with higher risks. Data breaches, cyberattacks, and hacking attempts against individuals, governments, and private corporations have grown dramatically over the past decade. Reports suggest that a single data intrusion can cost an enterprise an average of $3.92 million in damages.

The stakes are clear: protecting digital data—especially confidential information—should be a top priority for IT managers. Without a strategy in place, an enterprise leaves itself open to cyber criminals who can exploit weak entry points to steal or manipulate information worth millions.

Cyber-security and endpoint data loss protection strategies need to cover all access points, including portable devices like USB flash drives. Employees require storage tools that are both secure and simple to use. Striking this balance empowers users while ensuring IT managers can safeguard the organization’s infrastructure against human error or forgetfulness.

Since IBM introduced the USB flash drive in 2000, the device has remained a primary tool for information exchange across industries—government, healthcare, finance, telecommunications, and manufacturing all rely on USB storage. While convenient, standard USB drives carry risk. Without built-in safeguards, they can easily become vehicles for leaking sensitive data.

Healthcare illustrates the problem clearly. Doctors often use USB drives to move patient data between offices and hospitals. Each site must remain secure, yet transferring files creates opportunities for malware to piggyback on the process. If a USB is read-only by default, malicious code cannot be written to it. After a network scan confirms safety, a password can unlock the drive to temporarily allow write access. By defaulting to write-protected mode, Lock License drives make it impossible for malware to slip in unnoticed.

Lock License drives automatically return to read-only mode whenever they are disconnected. This creates a smooth user experience—data can always be read without a password, while write access requires explicit authorization. Employees get the simplicity they expect, while IT teams benefit from reduced exposure to cyber threats.

The same principle applies in industrial settings. System control products—such as turbines, pumps, and wind energy motors—rely on firmware updates to function properly. Because these units lack interfaces to enter encryption passwords, encrypted USBs are not practical. A write-protected USB, however, is ideal. The system can pull updates directly from the drive, while the drive itself remains immune to malicious code injection.

Layered defenses remain critical for modern enterprises. Software solutions help, but locking down the most common physical entry point—the USB port—with hardware-enforced read-only devices adds another level of protection. Nexcopy’s write-protected USB flash drives fit into this broader strategy, helping both public and private organizations reduce vulnerabilities and maintain tighter control over digital assets.

Learn more about Nexcopy’s USB write protection technology.