Less than six months ago, after an inappropriate amount of research, I bought a new toaster for $30. My old toaster had died, as old toasters do, and I wanted to buy one cheap enough that I wouldn’t be mad when I had to replace it. If President Donald Trump’s current 145 percent tariff on Chinese imports remains in effect, the same toaster could cost me about $45 when that time comes.

You’ve probably seen a lot of these Trump tariff calculations for consumer products lately — especially those for goods made in China, from iPhones to baby products. In many instances, it’s hard to even guess how much things will cost because the tariff structure has become so complicated and is constantly changing.

Tariffs on consumer technology products are particularly tricky. China supplies the vast majority of electronics to the United States. In fact, smartphones and laptops alone accounted for over 16 percent of all US imports from China. That’s part of the reason the Trump administration recently added exemptions for a number of electronics, including smartphones and laptops, which were also exempt from the tariffs imposed by the first Trump administration. But this week, Trump clarified that those products could face an entirely new tariff targeting products with semiconductors on national security grounds. The fate of other electronics, like toasters, is even more unclear.

“Assuming all goes in the direction this is headed, it may cause shortages, and likely price hikes on some goods,” said Ben Bajarin, CEO and principal analyst at Creative Strategies. “But all of that is very difficult to know right now.”

That means we currently have no idea what will happen to our gadgets. Higher prices for some items seem inevitable and that might actually be the best case scenario for some electronics. Smartphone manufacturing has been expanding........

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