GregS wrote:
The current administration knows what they are doing -- they're making America great again by encouraging us to buy camera gear from the multitude of American camera gear manufacturers, thereby increasing American jobs.
Oh, wait. Nevermind.
Even better, we have so many lens choices from among all of the American third-party optical manufacturers…
gdanmitchell wrote:
They are “free to set whatever they wish price tags onto their good and services,” but they must now add to their calculations the amount that US importers must pay the US government to bring the products into the country, and then they must pass on some or all of that import tax to the consumers.
If their list price for a product was $1000 and they don’t change it, they eat the import tax themselves… which they clearly cannot do the size of the tax diminishes their profit to to zero or less. So they change the list price to something higher to cover the addition import tax costs.
They are trying all kinds of interesting strategies to deal with this and the unknowns of what the tariffs will actually be. (That keeps changing.) Some are simply setting prices high enough that they can cover what they regard as the likely tariffs. Others are setting the prices a little lower than that but much higher than they were and expecting to lose some profits for a while. (I had a discussion recently with someone from Apple about this, and he said that they have calculated a limited time frame over which this can work, but it can’t go on indefinitely.)
We’re also seeing a new and sometimes-confusing pricing game. The company raises the prices as described above. Then if tariffs don’t materialize right away the y announce a “dollars off” sale. but the sale price is now higher than the previous list price.
Don’t forget that this doesn’t just affect camera gear. It affects virtually every product category we purchase. And it doesn’t just affect the purchase itself. As buyers pull back due to higher prices, the American vendors and stores suffer. Shippers lose money as fewer products are shipped. State governments and all that they support (police, fire, education, etc.) will lose tax income and have to cut back, putting more people out of work. Your costs to insure your photography gear will go up. Prices for used products will rise.
Although I appreciate the time you put into expression your thoughts, I do not quite see or understand a direct relationship to the assertion that they were commenting on. Please help me to understand whether you agree to the assertion or disagree. If you disagree - please kindly explain where it fails.
It is worth watching Warren Buffet's last and final investor day meeting. No one represents capitalism at its best than Buffet. He called trade war an act of war. His other comment "we should do what we do best and they (other countries) should do what they do best" is common sense, except for members of a certain cult.
SergeyT wrote:
Although I appreciate the time you put into expression your thoughts, I do not quite see or understand a direct relationship to the assertion that they were commenting on. Please help me to understand whether you agree to the assertion or disagree. If you disagree - please kindly explain where it fails.
Really?
the point is that the (obvious) fact that manufacturers can set their own prices doesn’t tell the whole story here. I’ll let you spend a bit of your “time” pondering that and seeing how the markets are grossly distorted by the import tax nonsense.
the point is that the (obvious) fact that manufacturers can set their own prices doesn’t tell the whole story here. I’ll let you spend a bit of your “time” pondering that and seeing how the markets are grossly distorted by the import tax nonsense.
You seemingly ignored the second part of my assertion ...
To help you here I will ask this - "did you ever pay for your photo equipment more than what you were willing to pay?"
SergeyT wrote:
You seemingly ignored the second part of my assertion ...
To help you here I will ask this - "did you ever pay for your photo equipment more than what you were willing to pay?"
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I'd love to chat about whatever the heck your agenda is, but, nah... ;-)
GregS wrote:
The current administration knows what they are doing -- they're making America great again by encouraging us to buy camera gear from the multitude of American camera gear manufacturers, thereby increasing American jobs.
Oh, wait. Nevermind.
Yes, this strategy could have possibly worked back in the 50's or so, back when Kodak was making loads of cameras, Graflex was cranking, Deardorf and others were pumping out 4x5's and 8x10's and there were still optics manufacturers in the us (Kodak, American Optical, B+L and a few others).
It's about 75 years too late and probably wasn't even a good idea back then.
gdanmitchell wrote:
While used will remain less costly than new, keep in mind that as the price of new goes up due to tariffs the market for used cameras will also see price increases.
I priced selling some gear a couple months ago when I pre-ordered the X-E5. Finally pulled the trigger to sell this week and the quoted prices were up a little more than 10%.
Ken_Cravillion wrote:
Yeah, I still want to pick up a second XT-5 for when the GFX isn't needed as well as the XF 23mm 1.4 and XF 500mm.
This might be a pretty good time to jump on a used X-T5 unless you want to wait until the X-T6 is announced. For me the X-T5 is still peak Fuji.
Great control interface, classically good looking and just nice to use. I’m not shooting landscape much at all or find that the A1 II is just fine at it and I’m not shooting real estate for $ anymore so the poor GFX kit is just sitting.
I have too much gear as it is, I consider this a GAS tax. Plus all my gear has just jumped in value!
In all seriousness, an increase in tariffs have been needed for a long time, but they should have been stair stepped increases instead of a global one time increase. The concessions made in these deals are what will provide the revenue not the tariffs. The mineral deals and profit sharing will be in the billions. That's what is expected to pay down the national debt and to decrease tax burdens. So it's a rob Peter to pay Paul scenario. In the Fuji increases, Fuji is absorbing 5%, the consumer is absorbing 10% and the U.S. is making money on that. For reference Fuji made 1.76 billion in profit last year. The model in theory is that it will make manufacturers set up shop in the states. A perfect example can be seen with German car manufacturers. BMW and Mercedes opened two plants in the U.S. and pay an approximate 5% tax to do so. Audi scrapped their plans to build SUVs here and opened a new plant in Mexico, avoiding the 5%. Since the tariffs have been in place Audi NA has been losing 150 million dollars a MONTH. They can't charge more, otherwise there will be too many defectors to BMW/MB. Audi NA wanted to make their own deal with the U.S. but the EU prevented countries from doing so alone.
This is more than a 'wanna make an omelette gotta break some eggs, thing. This is a very very big gamble. Like I said...I believe it should have been a small percentage increase each year until an appropriate reciprocal tariff was met. It doesn't matter in the end, because we are in an endless circle jerk of both parties playing games every other presidency. Next admin will remove the tariffs and the prices will stay high. Either way the consumer is f'd.
For decades the conservatives have told us that lowering taxes was the way to make the American economy stronger since the increased income from lower taxes would be invested into the economy and cause it to take off like a rocket.
But now the new conservative mantra is that imposing significant new federal import taxes on a huge range of products (and on top of existing sales taxes)… will cause the economy to take off like a rocket.
liggy wrote:
lol… I’ve been contemplating selling my entire GFX kit. Maybe it would be smart to let prices adjust upwards a bit first.
Is so sad that so many people everywhere are going to be negatively impacted by these asinine blanket tariffs.
Then again I am experiencing some schadenfreude at the same time.
They will just tell you that "it's exactly what I voted for!", even though they're clearly suffering. Insane. This phenomenon will be studied for years to come.
I also thought about selling all my GFX gear as it seems overkill for what I use it for. But everytime I look at the images, I just can't do it. Also, the ability to be able to crop aggressively has been very useful for me.
Fujifilm Price Increase Details
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