Besides the President (and a few million faithful supporters lacking basic economic knowledge) it seems clear that nobody thought that the tariffs were not an additional consumer tax.
The secretary of commerce of course knew but wasn’t able to tell the World out of concerns for his job. You cannot disagree with Trump.
The mechanism of tariffs is very simple and clear. The importer pays the tariffs and most of the time translates them into higher prices.
It’s not the producing country that pays the tariffs. It never was and never will be.
When it starts to show what do you do? You distract your fans with something else… shall we bomb Iran? That will make some people happy among the 7 million strong Jewish minority. But… isn’t that woke? 🤣
It's a perfect storm. Most companies are not going to be able to suddenly lose 10+ percent margins overnight. Higher prices will lead to fewer sales, which will also lead to higher prices. The US dollar is down a bit on currency conversions, too, which will lead to higher prices for imported goods.
Maybe in time, this will work out a bit between changes in tax law, and if some manufacturing does spur back up in the US. But currently, as a consumer, it definitely stings.
That should help the American camera manufacturers.
Seriously, how many of these goods can we even manufacture. And if you can't manufacture it, you are just raising prices. These factories aren't coming back overnight, 1 a.m. social media post or not
DWOfPaul wrote:
Also, Sigma raised there prices due to tariffs.
Not true, I am in Canada and Sigma increased prices here too.
Just like supply chain excuse during Covid, camera manufacturers are jumping in to raise prices. Supply chains went back to normal, but prices stayed up.
Outstanding wrote:
Not true, I am in Canada and Sigma increased prices here too.
Just like supply chain excuse during Covid, camera manufacturers are jumping in to raise prices. Supply chains went back to normal, but prices stayed up.
A fellow Canadian here. I fully expect that our prices will not be protected. Companies will no doubt hike the prices worldwide or in large regions at least to adjust for tariffs in the US. With that said, so far I haven't seen the prices change here. The 180-600mm is still on sale here too for another couple of days. Hmmm.....
A fellow Canadian here. I fully expect that our prices will not be protected. Companies will no doubt hike the prices worldwide or in large regions at least to adjust for tariffs in the US. With that said, so far I haven't seen the prices change here. The 180-600mm is still on sale here too for another couple of days. Hmmm.....
Exactly
I expect prices world wide to go up in order to lower the profit margin in the USA.
bernardl wrote:
Besides the President (and a few million faithful supporters lacking basic economic knowledge) it seems clear that nobody thought that the tariffs were not an additional consumer tax.
The secretary of commerce of course knew but wasn’t able to tell the World out of concerns for his job. You cannot disagree with Trump.
The mechanism of tariffs is very simple and clear. The importer pays the tariffs and most of the time translates them into higher prices.
It’s not the producing country that pays the tariffs. It never was and never will be.
When it starts to show what do you do? You distract your fans with something else… shall we bomb Iran? That will make some people happy among the 7 million strong Jewish minority. But… isn’t that woke? 🤣
I expect prices world wide to go up in order to lower the profit margin in the USA.
No company wants to lose the US market.
By not adjusting the prices, the camera manufacturers might lose money on every item they sell to the US, and I don't see how this would be sustainable in the long run. In practice each subsidiary is expected to make a profit from its operations in its region, thus they have to increase prices. Fortunately for the camera manufacturers, all the major manufacturers of stills and hybrid cameras are making their products in the same countries (Thailand, China, Japan etc.) and so the tariffs affect them in a similar way, thus the tariffs are more or less neutral in terms of competitiveness of the different manufacturers in the US market. The democratically elected leaders of the US place a tax on imports, the consumers pay the tax via higher prices. Since Trump's official goal is to get manufacturers to build factories in the US, to achieve this goal, the tariffs would need to be in place for decades. So, the consumers in the US have to accept the new prices or vote differently in the future, according to the policy they want.
Most manufacturers probably bring products into Canada via the US and ideally they could avoid the tariffs by doing some extra paperwork since the product is not sold in the US if it is going to Canada, but given that no one knows how the situation continues, it might not be worth it for them to establish new shipping routes directly to Canada or modify their software to handle the extra paperwork, so the prices go up along with the US prices, at least for some manufacturers. I would imagine that if the tariffs continue indefinitely as per the administration's stated goals (of bringing back manufacturing to the US), then the manufacturers would start directly importing products into the Canadian market, or at least be willing to do the extra paperwork.
Currently for the first time in my life, many lenses are cheaper to buy in the EU than the US.
USA refurbished 180-600 lens sells for 2000. I bought mine new here for usd 1800
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My last post logic goes like this
1-The US market or the units sold in the USA is huge compared to other regions of the world (guessing/assumption)
2-Do manufacturers want to sell their products (because of the tariffs) at a price causing the units sold to significantly goes down. The answer no
3-So how the manufacturers reduce the impact of the tariffs such that they do not get impacted with significant reduction in their volume to the largest market
4-If I make such a decision, I will reduce my profit margin in the US and make up that difference else where
I consider the US market as I consider a whole sale customer.
Just the way I think about it. Maybe the actual trade dynamics is different. Or there are things I do not know about.
DWOfPaul wrote:
Also, Sigma raised there prices due to tariffs.
It's a perfect storm. Most companies are not going to be able to suddenly lose 10+ percent margins overnight. Higher prices will lead to fewer sales, which will also lead to higher prices. The US dollar is down a bit on currency conversions, too, which will lead to higher prices for imported goods.
Maybe in time, this will work out a bit between changes in tax law, and if some manufacturing does spur back up in the US. But currently, as a consumer, it definitely stings.
NissanPatrol wrote:
3-So how the manufacturers reduce the impact of the tariffs such that they do not get impacted with significant reduction in their volume to the largest market
There is a curve describing how with increasing prices the sales numbers go down. You can fairly easily translate this into a curve describing how your overall profits go up and then down again with increasing prices. With a new tax added into the formula, that curve shifts. The result is that your maximum profit sales price is now found at a higher price. This roughly applies to all camera importers in the same way. Hence while margins may shrink, prices will certainly go up. Taxes and their impacts are not a new thing.
4-If I make such a decision, I will reduce my profit margin in the US and make up that difference else where
For some reason I keep reading this weird argument. Given how everyone involved tries to maximize profits, it just makes no sense. If profits elsewhere can be increased, they'll do that. That is almost totally unrelated to what happens in the US. There is some limit to price disparities (grey imports, shopping during vacations, actual smuggling, etc), but for the most part this is wishful thinking.
Note: if some politician misrepresents the effect of tariffs, he is either lying or he didn't bother to ask someone who understands them.
We were deliberately a consumer economy coming out of Brenton Woods. That’s getting to the point it’s unsustainable without worse consequence. Higher camera prices as a result of tariffs are A)transitory and B) of minor concern if we want to afford any in a decade or two.
AdaptedLenses wrote:
We were deliberately a consumer economy coming out of Brenton Woods. That’s getting to the point it’s unsustainable without worse consequence. Higher camera prices as a result of tariffs are A)transitory and B) of minor concern if we want to afford any in a decade or two.
I agree
Going in and out of the US observing social and economical changes since the late 70s
Daran wrote:
For some reason I keep reading this weird argument. Given how everyone involved tries to maximize profits, it just makes no sense. If profits elsewhere can be increased, they'll do that. That is almost totally unrelated to what happens in the US. There is some limit to price disparities (grey imports, shopping during vacations, actual smuggling, etc), but for the most part this is wishful thinking.
Walmart's CFO has expressed they'll be using that strategy in the USA between tariffed and non-tariffed goods, based on price elasticity of individual segments and products, so I imagine companies will be doing that on an international scale as well:
One strategy Walmart might employ is raising prices on some non-tariffed goods.
"In some cases, we'll absorb costs within a category or department and not simply pass on a tariff cost attributable to each item individually," he said. "We'll be managing mix across items, categories, and businesses."
snapsy wrote:
Walmart's CFO has expressed they'll be using that strategy in the USA between tariffed and non-tariffed goods, based on price elasticity of individual segments and products, so I imagine companies will be doing that on an international scale as well:
One strategy Walmart might employ is raising prices on some non-tariffed goods.
"In some cases, we'll absorb costs within a category or department and not simply pass on a tariff cost attributable to each item individually," he said. "We'll be managing mix across items, categories, and businesses."
Yes, the elasticity or inelasticity of demand makes a great deal of difference to where price increases will be applied. For Sony and their cameras, this implies that some models will see price increases while others will not. The high-end cameras, like the A1 II are most likely to see price increases, as will cameras like Leica where the demand is more related to the color than to the price. Less expensive models, like the Sony A7CII, are less likely to see price increases or will see minimal increases.
snapsy wrote:
Walmart's CFO has expressed they'll be using that strategy in the USA between tariffed and non-tariffed goods, based on price elasticity of individual segments and products, so I imagine companies will be doing that on an international scale as well: One strategy Walmart might employ is raising prices on some non-tariffed goods.
"In some cases, we'll absorb costs within a category or department and not simply pass on a tariff cost attributable to each item individually," he said. "We'll be managing mix across items, categories, and businesses."
Source: https://www.ksby.com/business/company-news/walmart-to-adjust-prices-due-to-tariff-related-costs-ceo-says
That is an entirely different price strategy. They want you to come to their store for essentially all you need regularly and keep higher prices for those items, that you buy there simply because you are already in their store. Trying the same trick internationally makes zero sense.
The possibility to geographicaly arbitrage the situation exists as always. The goal being to get the lowest price when regional sale events take place, take advantage of forex fluctuations, and of course not pay tariffs, VAT, or local sales taxes using multiple citizenship identities. This of course requires frequent travel unrelated to the purchase so travel costs are not assingned to the purchases.
What governments and politicians due is best mitigated through effecient structuring of your personal and business situations.
its official
