"US Tariffs - impact on domestic hobby shops" Topic

I'm curious what effect the tariffs will have on US miniatures/tabletop game retailers, and especially on those local hobby shops which are small businesses, or one-owner operations?

Our gaming here in the St. Louis, Missouri area largely depends and occurs courtesy our local shop locations.

I know a guy who has a mostly higher-end toy soldier and collector's figure business, and his costs were going up 10%. I don't know if the recent second round will have an additional impact. I know he was quite concerned about the 10%.

Apparently boardgame prices are doing to be hit hard, something like 30% increase, due to being dependent on Chinese production with little to no US alternatives.

The day the tariffs were first announced weeks ago, I asked for a quote for lead-free casting metal from an established supplier I had used in the past. (I am the owner of the Viking Forge.)

The supplier sent me an e-mail quote for a reasonable price that same day, but noted they would have to add a surcharge of some $700 USD so they wouldn't lose money due to the impending tariff. Note that at that time only Mexico, Canada and China had been targeted, and the tariffs had not been confirmed.

Due to the timing of these events, it was clear to me that my supplier was using the threat of tariffs to gouge his customers before they had even taken effect.

In news broadcasts from the legacy media (ABC, NBC, CBS) we were told that the price of tomatoes was going to rise because a tariff would be levied against Mexico, home prices would go up because Canadian loggers would be hurt and an American brewer wouldn't be able to sell his beer because he couldn't find bottle caps.

Are we so stupid that we cannot grow our own tomatoes, American loggers cannot take up the slack from the loss of Canadian wood and no one in this country can manufacture a bottle cap?

There will be wide-spread cheating, gouging, hyperbole, swindling and foolishness ahead.

But at the same time, none of this justifies the madness of a single man declaring economic war against the entire world, all in the same day.

I have a feeling this is going to be a very long thread.

I believe that the ripple of these tariffs will be very hard on the production end of things. Even the biggest of game manufacturers are very small in the grand scope of things. Editor Bill notes that Boardgames are going to be hit hard and that is true, but the many miniatures imported from the UK, Canada, AUS, The EU to the US will also be so. The two largest miniature paint manufacturers are based in the EU, Dice come almost entirely from China. How much paper to print rule sets and player aids happens to be imported?

The companies that support local, regional and large conventions with their attendance, demos, purchase of booths and prize support are going to be impacted with a likely slower and smaller market. So this is going to be a big problem for a small industry and hobby worldwide.

I don't think that the tariffs will directly affect flea markets, garage sales, and my other usual sources of used or at least pre-owned things.

It's pretty rare that I buy anything retail, and then it's likely to be a pdf.

I have two shipments from the UK on the way. If I get hot with tariffs I will raise prices and lose sales.

The inmates are truly running the asylum implementing policies that can't possibly work.

Are we so stupid that we cannot grow our own tomatoes, American loggers cannot take up the slack from the loss of Canadian wood and no one in this country can manufacture a bottle cap?

At the scale that we consume them? Realistically no. Produce will be interesting to watch. Those of us GenX and older remember when most fruits and vegetables in the supermarket were very seasonal in terms of price and availability. Now people are used to the convenience of being able to buy everything, everywhere, year round, with little fluctuation in the price, because we import massive amounts of produce.

Hobby wise, yes it's going to hit, and it already has. China did not get a reprieve on the 10% tariff implemented on February 4th. I was at a hobby show in March and two vendors were taking about the impact and how/if they could weather it. A glimmer of hope was that there were still suppliers who were not manufacturing in China. Now everyone has had a minimum 10% applied, and most of the countries we source our goodies from are much worse.

ok, let's talk about tomatoes, lumber, and bottle caps. Most of the US is located above the frost line. Only southern Florida and southern California can grow vegetables year round. The rest of us are stuck growing tomatoes in the summer. That means the demand for tomatoes far exceeds the ability to supply just from those two areas. You want tomatoes in December, they have to come from a warm place able to grow them year round. There's no ability to change that situation. So by putting a tariff on tomatoes is nothing more than adding an extra tax on US consumers. If you want tomatoes in December, you gotta pay.

Lumber – little different model – if the Canadians can timber cheaper than the US, does it make sense to force that production back to the US. We have a high cost of Labor, land is expensive, we've already cut down the easy to access lumber. If we want to ramp timber production up, then its going to take time. And it may still be cheaper to pay the added tax on lumber than start up new timbering (so yet another tax on the consumer)

Bottle caps – There's no excess capacity in manufacturing. It's run as close to full capacity at possible. Plants or machinery that isn't running is money lost. Everyone runs on just in time delivery. It's also about cost. If I can buy 1000 bottle caps for $5 USD from another country, versus producing my own at $10 USD, then I'm going to import those caps. Add in a 35% tariff, the foreign caps are still only 6.75 per 1000. No one is going to start up manufacturing of caps in that scenario, and the consumer takes it in the wallet again…

I think targeted tariffs are useful in changing behaviors, and I acknowledge that our concerns about China are legitimate. But just implementing blanket tariffs across the board will not bring the manufacturing back to the US. There will be some gain, but with robotry and AI, the factories can operate on a much smaller footprint from a human resource standpoint. If they do increase at all.

As for Hobby stores in the US, it's going to be rough. Prices will go up. Enough to impact consumer's spending, I don't know. GW products will go up as will anything made in China (brushes, paints, supplies). Not to mention the cost of casting. I would think the bigger concern for them is if this starts to slide into a recession. Consumer confidence is down here in the US. Add in the inflationary nature of tariffs and consumers may slow or stop spending on discretionary items.

These new import tariffs may exert a chilling effect on innovation – they'll affect the number of new products being presented in the market.

They will also impact on the number of different lines (reduce) and on the amount of stock held (reduce).

So less of what you are used to and less of what you are expecting.

Tariffs definitely will affect prices, of that there is no doubt. However how much gouging will go on as a result? It is an awfully convenient excuse to raise prices, even if you aren't affected at all.

Also, we used to make a lot of stuff domestically and accepted seasonality for things we couldn't get year round. As a kid, it was unusual for my mom to be able to get fresh fruit in winter in Wisconsin. Now I can get literally everything I want year round with no limits. That was the good part of globalization.

The bad part is that we used to have neighborhood delis, bakeries and butcher shops. People had local manufacturing jobs that paid ok and allowed even working class people to afford a modest home.

All those businesses and jobs went away when you could just pop down to Wal Mart or Target or other globally supplied places to get stuff for a few pennies less. Now the working class jobs are working for Wal Mart or Target or Home Depot and other globally supplied businesses.

We didn't get to local unsustainability over night. Many don't even care as long as they get theirs, yet complain about the growing chasm between the haves and have nots. You can have it both ways as long as you aren't one of the have nots.

Neither party, that I can see, other than lip service, has or had any credible plan to fix this, but they sure will take your money and your vote to keep them in power.

Getting back to miniatures, the dealer I mentioned above just posted that he (and his fellow dealers) are looking at a 54% tariff on their stock coming out of China.

A lot of whining going on about tariffs. Some of it just plain speculation.

What is fact is that the US is getting gouged by most countries to protect their own interests. And now they howl when we decide that fair is fair.

All of us want cheap. But the long-term costs are not good for the nation. We used to manufacture furniture and produce clothing here in the US. All gone now, as are numerous other things, such as boardgames.

Free trade is supposed to mean free of artificial barriers, such as tariffs and subsidies. Canada having a 250% tariff on US dairy products is not free or fair trade.

We let us get into this mess and it will take us time to get out of it. And some pain. I think it will be worth it.

+1 tgerritsen

Everything gets more expensive, so there's less money left over for hobbies. What hobby money people do have may not get spent because $25 USD items are now $40 USD and seem too expensive, especially for hard times. Marginal businesses, both manufacturing and retail, will fail. We'll all get better at homebrew rules and scratch building. And 3D printing.

It all depends on how long the tariffs last. They could be gone next week.

Meanwhile, look at TIPS bonds. I suspect they're going to have a golden age.

Board game prices will go up significantly as will any terrain or other items primarily produced in China both for cost and availability issues. The US based game manufacturers such as GMT and Compass are not massive highly profitable corporations and will pass those cost on as will the retailers. The effect of that 54% increase will be felt in terms of demand but just how much is still an unknown,

I'm guessing most miniatures we in the US import will be from the UK and that 10% will not have a huge effect. The 20% from the EU may have an effect but I'm not sure to what extent.

After all is said and done, tariffs are simply a sales tax paid by the importer. If GMT wants to import product from China, they will pay the 54% and I assume pass that on and the retailer will likely do the same. The key unknown is what we, the consumer, will do in regards to paying that increase or buying less.

Walmart or Target may eat part of that increase on say plastic garbage pails but our hobby does not encompass companies that can absorb costs in the name of sales. I personally can't see GW eating any added cost without passing it on and they are as close as we come to a firm that could.

"ok, let's talk about tomatoes, lumber, and bottle caps"

Tomatoes grow quite-well year-round in California (where most tomatoes are grown) Florida and Texas.

Have you ever spoken with an American logger? The owners of three-dozen or so companies whom I have spoken with would be eager to take up the slack caused by a tariff on Canadian wood. (Still, I wish Trump had not put Canada on the tariff list.) (Fentanyl from Canada? Are you kidding?)

"we've already cut down the easy to access lumber"

But here's a surprise, it all grew back again. It happens every 15 years. With modern forestry management regulations and techniques, nothing is lost these days.

"There's no excess capacity in manufacturing. It's run as close to full capacity at possible."

Oh really? Existing plants with shuttered doors in every American city, plenty of capitol for new start-ups (At least until the last two days) and many new opportunities to address new manufacturing needs?

By the way, how hard do you think it would be to set up the tooling for the production of bottle caps? They're not exactly neutron bombs. If anything, the owner of that brewery should buy a small punch-press or two and guarantee his future source of the all-so critical bottle caps!

After the President's catastrophic implementation of tariffs on nearly everyone, whether friend or foe (Once again, in effect, a declaration of economic war on the world) I would be the last one to carry his water, but I see way too many people underestimating the American ability to produce our own goods once again.

Remember, every time you export a job, you kill a consumer.

Then again, it's 2 PM EST and the market is down 1600 points again. If this keeps up, this whole conversation might prove pointless. After the Crash of 1929 there weren't very many manufacturing startups, let alone hobby stores.

@pzivh43 Much of that "whining" is coming from the experts, economists who know how bad and poorly thought out this policy is and they have data to back up their "speculation". Even conservative outlets like the WSJ or The Economist are raising the alarm on this policy. You should read the recent editorial in the latter. Now even some Republican senators have recovered some of their sanity and are questioning the policy. It has been proven that tariffs don't work, look up Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. Trade is even more global now than in 1930. A tariff list that includes an island group inhabited by only penguins is clearly not well thought out and how they got to the numbers is anyone's guess because they are way off. Dartboard is my thought.

As much as this administration wants to turn the clock back to 1890 no amount of tariff's or wrecking the economy is going to bring back manufacturing on that scale. We have had tariffs on Chinese goods for some time now and it is just amazing to see all those businesses building factories to produce toys, boardgames, and all those cheap clothes – oh wait those are just logistics warehouses! The US is now primarily a service economy, and we run surpluses in that area, but those numbers were left off the chart. Who do you think will accept the low wages required to make domestic manufacturing competitive?

What happened to the great trade deal with Canada and Mexico this president negotiated the first time? Are you telling me that those nasty Canadians while helping our automotive industry build cars were pulling the wool over our eyes and gauging us the whole time? Shocking! Who would have thought that the guy who bankrupted multiple businesses could have made a bad deal.

Sorry, this is a lot of pain for no gain.

Oh really? Existing plants with shuttered doors in every American city, plenty of capitol for new start-ups (At least until the last two days) and many new opportunities to address new manufacturing needs?

Assume the best of all hypotheticals in starting a plant up; no need for retooling, all machinery in good working order, government expedites all the paperwork and inspections, there is a ready pool of hireable people, there is a sufficient cadre of trainers and shift leads, all input materials can be readily sourced from domestic or favored nation sources, there is a pool of investment capital ready to hand over money today. Even with all of that going, it is easily a year before production starts, probably longer. Given the capricious nature of the administration, who is going to make that kind of investment?

+1 pzivh43

These new import tariffs may exert a chilling effect on innovation – they'll affect the number of new products being presented in the market.

OR -- will it lead to more innovation? Right now the gaming hobby is addicted to Big Box games full of plastic and bling that's produced on the cheap in China. How many people have bought into a KS or a game just for the plastic minis, 'cause the rules and the game itself was just meh? I'll raise my hand on that one.

So if you can't gloss over a mediocre game design with lots of bling, will we see new types of games? Will we see fewer games but of higher quality?

Will we see innovations in production with things like Siocast and mass 3D printing?

My company, PaperTerrain uses cardstock and ink. My cardstock is mostly (maybe entirely) made in the US. The ink for my printer is made in Indonesia. Not sure what this will do to my prices. Of course I haven't raised my prices in over 10 years, so maybe it's time anyway. :)

……mass 3D printing (that may be indeed what gets a huge boost).

I'm still wondering about where many of us in the USA will come together to experience this hobby – often at some available retail space, or hobby convention.

To me, there's a coming Pricing-Pandemic, that may cause us going 'underground' again…..and the noise of a 3D printer in the basement is not going to protect my way of socializing and gaming.

It was just announced that Vietnam, which currently has a 46% tariff on US imports, has started talks to reduce that tariff to ZERO.

Isn't that how "Free Trade" is supposed to work?

I'm not versed in what Vietnam would be buying in US goods?

And it's just been announced that China, of far greater significance, has slapped an additional 34% on imported US goods.

I haven't read anything on this, but what about services? I understand importing a miniature figurine from China will be hit by a tariff, but what about shipping miniatures (and back) to China for painting?

I'm retired, and all of my "income" comes from regular withdrawals from my retirement account. Half of that fund is indirectly invested in domestic and international shares, which of course have taken a beating in the last few days.

My reaction to becoming poorer overnight will be to stop spending on non-essentials. I don't think I'm alone.

When the inevitable recession kicks in, millions of others will also stop spending on wargames and hobbies. Some good companies will disappear. And all because of one man.

The bright side is that one man can stop all this from happening before it's too late. Unfortunately, ego makes that unlikely.

It is stupefying that Americans did not realize that this was what they were going to get. Yes everything is going to be more expensive. Free market means no barriers to trade tariffs, are the opposite of this.

Vietnam does not have a 46% tariff on US goods. Average import tariff on US goods is less than 15%, with non-agricultural products being less than 9%. Even the average for agricultural products gets skewed a bit high because Vietnam upped the tariffs on certain things like alcoholic beverages and soft drinks. Note that this information comes from the administration's own Office of the Trade Representative and was released on March 31, 2025.

For those of you interested in the source of tariff rates and information from the Office of the US Trade Representative,here is the direct link to the official publication: PDF link

So you can cherry-pick your own statistics.

The information is from the latest 2024 Trade Survey.

Being literate is not cherry-picking.

Deruyter had it right when he mentioned that US is more of a Service Economy versus a Manufacturing One. The Steel industry is but one to look at regarding how much the US has changed in the last 75 years or so.

Will be interesting to look down the road and see how the Global Economy stands not to mention the US one – particularly after we get past the propaganda, spin, finger pointing, chest pounding and hope.

"The sky is falling, the sky is falling!" -- the fable of Henny Penny, also known as Chicken Little

"On ne saurait faire d'omelette sans casser des œufs." -- François de Charette (You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.)

Alternatively, "There's no making without breaking."

+1 Enfant Perdu

34% Chinese tariff?

That looks like a Trade War to me.

I'm also a bit bemused by the putative return of (for example) bottle cap making to the US. The reason these industries are in Asian countries is that they pay their workers starvation wages.

I'm sure US workers are going to love their new, low pay rate in their bottle cap making factory. Any money they have will go to essentials & *not* peripherals such as hobbies.

You sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind. Or in the words of Julia Roberts, "Big mistake.Big. Huge"

"You sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind."

"May the wind at your back never be your own."

"There's no making without breaking."

Make what? Make manufacturing return to the US? It's not going to happen until US wages are as low as Asian wages. Do you really want that?

In any case, US companies aren't going to start spending billions on setting up plants again, making goods that the people can't afford, whilst not knowing whether the Protectionist in Chief will change his mind tomorrow.

Just to be clear, the formula used, per the White House, has nothing to do with actual tariffs but is based on the trade deficit.

The trade deficit with the US of any specific country (except the EU is as a whole) is divided by that countries exports to the US and then multiplied by half and rounded. Absent a deficit or a number below 10%, 10% was the default hence the tariffs on the penguins and uninhabited rocks.

The EU number came in at .389 rounded to .39 and then roughly halved to .2 or a 20%. Per the WTO the average EU tariff is 3% thus I'm quite lost as to how the numbers are related to reciprocity.

Stone +1

You know, it's all pretty basic – you don't mess with someone's money!

*Just deleted a whole pile of rational comments I was going to make here (nah, no reason for it)*

You just feel it!

"*Just deleted a whole pile of rational comments I was going to make here (nah, no reason for it)*"

I agree. Apart from the usual waste of time it is trying to persuade the intractable, all we have to do is wait a little while. The truth will be on the grocery shelves & the lines of the unemployed.

I stopped buying direct from Europe over a decade ago. I bought some miniatures from Italy and shipping was more than the price of the lead. $650 USD and postage with customs $1,200. USD

Last year I bought some shelves off QVC but they were made in China. So when they got here they wanted more money to release from customs. I said no.

Game stores items were hit hard during Biden inflation and more now. Retail prices on boardgames average over $100 USD now. I plan to close out the over 500 games that I have in stock.

Check your 2010 prices in catalogs for miniatures. Prices have steadily increased. So now it will go up more due to tariffs.
Dice is another item that more than doubled in price over the last few years.when I run out of dice that I sell at 25 cents each, I had planned on a bin of 50 cents dice but many dice or over a $1 USD my cost.

Another thing is that US companies doing business in other countries send profits back home (Starbucks, MacDonalds, Ford, whatever General Motors is called now. The list is long). Is this included in the calculation in any way ?

Yet another thing is the exchange rate, although I don't have a clue what affect it will have.

More phone calls:
link

I think you need to blame the countries that allow offshoring profits made locally through subsidiary licensing deals etc, Dagwood.

"Trump has long complained about the EU's unwilligness to buy American cars."
Ever considered that EUropeans are 'unwillig' because better options are available from elsewhere?

Global recession here we come.

Well done.

Phone calls? Only between each other.

The concept of various nations coming "cap in hand" is typical "Gateway Pundit" disinformation & down right lies. It's nice to fool yourself but as a recession bites, it will be cold comfort.

The EU, UK & Canada are moving towards a block that will exclude the US.
link

This brilliant US tariff plan has had the effect of driving South Korea, Japan & China together.
link

The US is a long way down the path of becoming a friendless state.
And it looks like being an impoverished state as well.

Why worry about mopping up floors when there is a hole in the roof ?

"The US is a long way down the path of becoming a friendless state." 😢

Well then…. I guess you will all have to go back to playing with yourselves… ounce again?

Serious question, not a swipe at the US, but what effect did the US' last venture into isolationism have, 35th?

It's not something that I remember reading about, except in the broadest terms. It wasn't an issue in Oz back then, because although we were notionally independent, we were still basically a dominion of the British Empire. The first big rift was in 1942, when disputes over where our forces would be employed basically saw us cut most ties with the UK and turn to the US as our most important ally. As a result what was happening in the US had little impact, and less interest, here. The consequences of isolationism for the US are unknown, at least to me.