Home › Forums › News, Rumours & General Discussion › US/China Trade War › Reply To: US/China Trade War
From Reddit: “I am a licensed Customs Broker in the US. I literally deal with these tariffs ALL day long. People sit here and complain that “Well a 25% price increase is going to kill businesses”.
Here is some news for you to get a better perspective on this situation: So let’s say a game publisher has a game with an MSRP of $60.00. The actual cost they declare to Customs is around $8-$11, on average. The rest of the cost goes to paying for things like ocean freight charges (which are non-dutiable and thus, the tariffs do not impact), and warehousing and trucking and profit and labor costs and other local charges, none of which are dutiable and thus the tariffs do not affect. That means, on a game that has an import cost of $8.00, the tariff adds $2 to the price of importation of that copy of the game. $2 to a $60 game is a total increase of 3.33%. That sort of cost can be absorbed with barely any notice to the consumer.
And if you think I making things up, these tariffs have been in place for virtually everything from China since September. How many things have you noticed huge cost hikes on? Anything that jumped 25%? Any small businesses that were thriving prior to Sep 4 that are now out of business? Most people here seem to think of this like a VAT, or a Value Added Tax, which is a flat tax added at the time of sales tax, which means you are taxed on all the freight and trucking and warehousing and whatever charges. That is not how tariffs work. So that $95 copy of Gloomhaven, were it imported from China after these tariffs, would (assuming the cost was fully passed on) cost about $98-100. Again, not a 25% cost increase. And the reality of this is that the additional tariffs they take in from China and a few other countries help offset the ridiculous runaway spending that Congress does so that it offsets some of the money we end up borrowing from China to pay for their nonsense.”
Board games are about to be hit with a 25% tariff. What happens next? from boardgames
