"How will tariffs apply to foreign painting services?" Topic

While tariffs ordinarily apply to imported goods, not services, it is also has been typical for south Asian painting services to list the miniatures as "toys" being imported so as to avoid what they must think are some sort of customs duties. Given new tariffs, I would think it doesn't make sense to label the miniatures that way.

Any thoughts on this issue?

One of my friends just told me that the painting service in the UK that he uses will no longer ship to the States. I'm not sure why that would be the case because the shipper doesn't pay the tariffs nor does he pay the shipping expense.

I wouldn't think that the painter would cut off his nose to spite his face because he doesn't like the current US president (nor his trade and foreign policy). He has been working with my friend for quite a few years now and they have a good relationship.

But you never know….

" wouldn't think that the painter would cut off his nose to spite his face because he doesn't like the current US president (nor his trade and foreign policy)."

I can definitely see it that way, especially if the painter is doing it for suds money.

This is a very complex area of customs law.

It might be argued your friend shipped "parts" to a plant overseas. That plant then works on the parts (i.e. paints them) and ships them back. That same part now has more value. So the tariff can apply to the new total value or just the increase. We have family in the auto business and they deal with this issue. Painting is much like assembly. I ship parts to Mexico. They work on them and ship them back. But what leaves are car parts worth $5,000 USD and what comes back is a car worth $20,000. USD

More importantly, the De Minimus is still $800 USD, so shipments under $800 USD aren't tariffed either way. So if I sourced things from, say, China I might place lots of smaller orders. But then my business is a flea in the grand scheme of things.

@Extra Crispy—yeah, the de minimus exception is an interesting point. That no longer applies for China, I believe. So perhaps the key could be to keep the painting lots at under $800 USD in value.

Mark is correct about the $800 USD De Minimus.
And Jim is probably correct about the political context. The painter is probably not going to quiz the customer about who he voted for, but could just be trying to be sure.

I think the short answer is "no one knows".

The De Minimus may not apply. Temu et al are taking advantage of it to ship directly to consumers. That kind of thing will likely be viewed as very bad by the administration, since it cuts US retailers out of the loop while still keeping manufacturing in China. So, at least with some countries, De Minimus is potentially on the chopping block.

As for other aspects, it will depend on how the law is written, and they're still deciding that. Trump has used certain laws as the basis for the EOs that created, and suspended, and revised, and reinstated, and suspended again, the various tariffs. But some lawyers are saying he used the wrong basis for those EOs and when they are certainly challenged in court they may get kicked out, only to be replaced by EOs that establish tariffs on stronger legal merits. And there's not reason that won't go around and around.

So get done now what you want to get done, the future is dicey and will stay in flux for some time.

I suspect Andrew has the right of it. I keep figuring about six months--maybe four of five, now?--of chaos before we reach a "new normal." The pressure to get to a normal will be pretty strong, but it takes a bit. Won't keep individuals from boycotting the US, but (a) the big players don't think that way, and (b) Heaven knows individual Americans have done their share of boycotting.

A friend who had serious number of his own troops painted in Sri Lanka had a sort of running battle with Customs even under the old rules. I don't believe he ever actually lost and had to pay import duties on castings he bought and shipped, but there were serious delays and inconveniences. Of course, we've already done my experience: stuff shipped to Canada might not be subject to tariffs, but is hit by serious provincial VAT and admin charges. No one hits the castings I buy from overseas with Indiana sales tax, let alone admin charges.

"Toys." I don't know the current status, but at one point in my lifetime "toys" and "military miniatures" were subject to different tariff schedules in the US. I can see how this might influnce someone's thinking--and the practice might outlive that feature of the law.

There was a story in the old mimeographed Courier of a gamer in Ecuador who had some figures shipped to him from the States.
In the lack of a description on that little green sticker, his own Customs declared them "miniature hand painted works of art". That really soaked him.

Perhaps now is the time to support an American figure-painting service?

I recently began painting my own figures again after a 25 year hiatus and realized that I'm far more patient now to do a decent job on my own.

No worries about tariffs or salty foreign painters.

I doubt that the UK painter's decision is to do with your current president, it is more to do with sending parcels to the US.

One of the big courier firms has announced that they will no longer accept high value parcels that are going to the US because of customs bureaucracy at the US end coupled with significant issues with USPS.

Which UK painter is it?

dBerzerk, I have my doubts about the viability of any First World painting service for massed units, and I say this as someone who does, sometimes, get paid for painting figures. Something to send special castings to, maybe. But it just takes too long to do a semi-decent job. If you charge enough to live on, you have no customers. If you charge what the customers can afford, you can't afford to live in the US.

I saw something similar in South Korea. First tour, I could buy hand-carved jade and custom-fitted boots. Ten years later, the Koreans were much more properous, but there was no such thing as hand-carved jade, and custom-fitted footwear was as rare there as it is here.

Within my lifetime we've gone from being able to pay Londoners to mass-paint Britains, to Spanish fishermen's wives painting JAL, to Sri Lankans. I don't think any of us want to live in a country so poor that painting castings en masse is a decent income.

For the UK painter could it be that to stay competitive he'd need to lower his prices to offset the tariff the importer (i.e. The individual customers) will be paying? That's perhaps not that attractive, especially if he can pick up work from else where easily enough.

The other issue is that the rules keep changing and maybe if figure painting is a side hustle then it gets to a point when you can't be bothered with it for a particularly disrupted market.

I don't think any of us want to live in a country so poor that painting castings en masse is a decent income.

🙄
How soon before we reach that stage? 😄

I'm a long-term optimist, OFM--one problem being that I don't personally have a long term. But I don't think any nation of any size has actually been poorer per capita over a generation since the Renaissance. (Trying to phrase that to exclude small contries with a single export. First generation of totalitarian states might also be an exception.) We lose relatively, of course. Prior to WWI, Argentina was, I think, wealthier than Canada. But it tends to be stagnation rather than absolute decline.

I think paying a First Worlder for a standard paint job, nothing special is going to go the way of paying someone to refuel my car and check my oil level and tire air pressure, or to take in my clothes if I lose weight. It pretty much already has.