After twisting wrenches for 50 years as a hobby, I have enough tools to open my own Harbor Freight store.
ShawnG said:
Remember what happened to prices on used stuff when "The Madness" happened in 2020?
Good times... I had accumulated a lot of (way too much) hobby stuff and sold almost all of it then for that very reason.
Ah, Princess auto. I like to say they're just like Harbor freight, but without all those annoying low prices. PA is expensive for what it is, but I guess your 30% discount will help.
Say what you want about tariffs, but like I've said too many times about our current government, the solution to a problem is never a tax.
In reply to Peabody :
Sold my travel trailer for $3k more than I paid for it after using it for 5 years.
First time that's ever worked out for me.
This thread is describing the trickle down effects of inflation on average consumers. With the covid related supply chain issues it was difficult to pin the price increases and shortages on any one event or policy so the unhappiness was muted. But this time the reasons are out there for all to see. It will be interesting to see how much pain voters will absorb waiting for the supposed benefit that will come one day.
Tariffs on China are now 145%, so costs are now just going to increase not only from that but also the chaos of not having any plan.
In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :
If Covid taught us nothing else, it is that every person and/or corporation, selling anything during a crisis, has a plan.
In reply to NOHOME :
Every? Remember that a one-person business is probably a corporation. There are a LOT of small to medium size business out there. Not all corporations are giant evil megacorps. Some are not out to screw you over but are just trying to survive.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
Yep. This will be a fun ride for mine.
I am gonna do what I have always done, keep buying Made in USA Snap-On. At leas the price delta will be smaller. I think I can count on one hand how much Horrible Freight stuff I have. Some gloves, and their Icon serpentine belt kit because I was in a pinch and needed one. Bought a MIller welder made in USA, Ingersoll compressor and air tools made in USA.
Heck I just bought an Ibis Exie mountain bike, full carbon made in...guess what...USA!
In reply to 93gsxturbo :
Assuming you ponied up for the Exie USA and not the regular Exie made in Vietnam, that is.
So, a frame made in the USA out of Chinese CF (that's where about 50% of the world supply comes from) and with Japanese- branded Chinese components, right? Or maybe the Taiwanese Sram components. It's a global economy.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
I guess I should be more mindful of words when I rant. Lord knows you have helped me out a bunch of times over many years as I struggle with this thing I call a hobby.
But it does feel like we are deliberately moving towards a "do unto others before they do unto you" society.
Pete
So the plan is to raise prices on foreign products to the point that it becomes advantageous for US companies to compete. The BIG problem and harsh reality is that the US simply can't compete on a global scale, due to our cost of living and corporate safeguards. If (greatly generalizing) Country X's cost of doing business is 1/10 of ours, a US company would have to charge 10X the price in order to produce the same product here. Sure, profit margins can change the factor somewhat, but not by much. Oh sure, there are well-off Americans for whom price doesn't matter, so for them, buying US-made products is the right and easy thing to do. They aren't wrong... the problem is that for the other 98% of the population, the prices are out of reach - either they buy offshore products, or buy nothing. That's why I see this whole thing as an enormous train wreck. The irony is that when factories start making products here (which will take years to happen) the Party can claim that what they did succeeded. Yes, technically they will have, but these companies will have to survive selling to the 2% of the population who can afford it.
So to be overly simplistic, we essentially have a federal sales tax being applied to foreign products, since all the added cost the consumers pay is essentially going to pay the US Government.
I don't see it working, the tariffs are going to make life difficult for consumers and businesses. Unless the tariffs become multiples of what's being applied to China, the cost to move manufacturing, labor costs, etc. are still going to exceed the increase due to tariffs.
NOHOME said:So does this mean that Chinese crap is going to get cheaper for Canadians and the rest of the world, since they have to sell the stuff somewhere?
Sometimes we get stuff because the US gets it too. We are not always big enough on our own. I hope this won't be the case with things like cheap tools, but you never know.
It might be a big deal for less expensive cars. Tariffs may remove the economic rational to sell lower margin cars in the US. The costs to meet North American crash and emissions standards may be too high for just our small market.
All of us in the hose world are waiting to see what the competition is doing on price increases. Nobody wants to be first but nobody wants to hemorrhage money.
We just went through this 2-3 years ago with container shipment cost jumping from $3-5000 up to $20,000. Hello Mr price increase.
Crackers (Forum Supporter) said:1) the cost of the tariffs have to outweigh the savings of importation. Kind of like these "fines" that corporations see as "coat of business" because it's cheaper to pay the fine than fix the problem. (I think that should be addressed as well, but I digress.)
2) the money from those tariffs need to be reinvested into rebuilding employment opportunities in the US with companies with over 1000 employees being exempt from those investments.
Regarding #1, interestingly some metrics suggest China manufacturing is actually more automated than US. How many high capital cost facilities are really going to shut down, especially in low margin commodity goods? I'm not sure that it's going to do anything positive.
#2 - Isn't the state directed part of the Chinese economy the part which is the least effective? Is that going to provide competitive goods and quality employment opportunities?
I sell a specialty product that is made in Japan. My only competitors manufacture in other Asian countries. This is a product that will never be made in the US thanks to technology ownership, certifications, cost of production and customer acceptance. All the tariffs will be passed on to the consumer. None of us have any need to absorb them other than perhaps to stay level with competing tariffs. It is a need to have product so we will keep selling. My products go up 24 per cent as of May 27th. Won't hurt me or cause me to cut costs, and I am sure I am not alone. End users will pay the tariffs, not foreign manufacturers.
On the topic of automation, a buddy pointed at the case of iPhones being made in China. He said that the reason why iPhones cost so much is because people are willing to pay it, not that there's $$$$ worth of parts in each phone. His opinion is that the talk about iPhone costs going up by huge amounts is silly, and that Apple will keep prices just low enough that people will keep buying them. In the specific case of Apple, I think that he might be right. For low-margin products however, it's going to be an entirely different picture.
If the tariff are reinstated in 90 days, without modification you can also expect healthcare to be impacted.
Medical devices and pharmaceuticals manufactured outside the outside the US or use materials from outside the US (plastic resins, chips, PCBAs) will also go up.
I would expect this to lead to higher health insurance cost during your next round of open enrollment and also expect insurance companies to become even more difficult to get approval for some procedures.
I'm reminded of the Monty Python bit where the knight keeps getting limbs cutoff
I dunno, it seems to me in recent years, HF quality has improved drastically, but so have prices. I used to not be able to buy a working grinder for ten bucks. More recently, after reading lots of reviews on their 1/2" impact, and how favorably it compared to SnapOn, I Jumped. Only problem: by the time I got batteries and a charger iy was damn near SnapOn money. Also, my local store is so full of mouth breathing rude folks as to make for a wholly unpleasant shopping experience anyway.
What I'm saying is HF was pretty well done for me pre-tariff. No matter who you are, you touch many things made in China every day. This will be a wild ride.
We all know China's government is terrible, and the way they steal intellectual property is rampant. We did this to ourselves over several decades. Getting off their teat is going to be painful, but it's something that really needs to happen.
Maybe Amazon will be forced to offer products that aren't exclusively Chinese made garbage. I just shopped for a product on there; zero name brands, only Chinese stuff with horrible reviews (that weren't placed by bots or fake reviewers). Had to go to Ace Hardware to find a name brand one that would last more than a week. Price difference? $4.
kb58 said:On the topic of automation, a buddy pointed at the case of iPhones being made in China. He said that the reason why iPhones cost so much is because people are willing to pay it, not that there's $$$$ worth of parts in each phone. His opinion is that the talk about iPhone costs going up by huge amounts is silly, and that Apple will keep prices just low enough that people will keep buying them. In the specific case of Apple, I think that he might be right. For low-margin products however, it's going to be an entirely different picture.
Apple is one of the best businesses that's ever existed. There's a reason it and so many world beating companies came out of the US; Talent, innovation, capital markets, rule of law, etc. They have massive margins, that a big reason why they're worth $3T. Companies like foxconn (worth $67B) do iphone assembly. Their margins are 2%. The massively profitable apple business is being risked because there is a perception that the 2% business is the important part that the US wants in on!
Let's be honest, end users in the rest of the world can easily chose a replacement for iPhones. What's the risk vs. possible reward?
TRoglodyte said:I'm reminded of the Monty Python bit where the knight keeps getting limbs cutoff
In that case the knight with no limbs was just talking crazy. He wasn't also cutting his own limbs off while complianing about the other guy being mean to him.
The sad reality is that even if US products can compete, they will just raise prices to match imports with tariffs. Why would they give up free profit?
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