Nikon is raising prices on Chinese-manufactured products on Monday, June 23rd. This weekend is the last time you'll see the China-made Z lenses at their current pricing (though there may still be sales discounts in the future, and, of course, the whole tariff thing triggering these increases is itself not predictable).
Both Nikon and Tamron—who makes some of the Nikkor lenses as well as ones under their own name—have been shifting some production. Tamron, for instance, is starting to produce US-bound lenses at their new plant in Vietnam. I've adjusted the "where are lenses made" page to reflect current knowledge, but that page may need some further updates soon as production continues to shift.
As for pricing, the Business School Think is this: it's much harder to raise prices than it is to lower them. The tariff situation caused NikonUSA to raise some prices. The question that I'm now getting asked is "what happens if the tariffs go back down?"
Normally I'd say that the company would likely keep the pricing at the higher level and just get aggressive in offering discounts. I think that would be certainly true if the situation was worldwide. However, the only real current impact is here in the US, so that opens up the problem of potentially having mismatched pricing globally in the future if tariffs drop. I'm not sure what Nikon would do in that instance.
