"Trade Wars" Topic

The big increases in P&P charges have already curtailed my overseas hobby spending. The tariffs won't make a difference.

Not buying much these days, and postage & tarrifs on 2mm armies are ususally less troublesome than changing exchange rates.

Ask me about the effect of inflation.

Back when the "issue" first came up a year ago, I had pretty much everything I needed. I might want to get Buffalo Soldiers from Dixon, but that was the extent of my "foreign" wishes. I had enough to paint on hand to live to be 100. "Once you paint everything you own, you die."
So tariffs etc had little effect. I already had all the Warlord Conquest Comanches and Woodland and Lakes figures I needed.
"Trade Wars"? Not as far as I was concerned. Maybe down the line I might want their Seminoles.

My project right now is SYW Austrians. Old Glory and Dayton Painting Consortium have what I need. I did get flags from Wargames Design, so any tariffs etc were negligible.

Moral of the story is that if you don't "need" foreign stuff, and domestic manufacturers can cover your needs, the trade wars didn't, and don't, affect my hobby. Noble Knight and eBay did supply some foreign stuff, but only as units. I never needed to consider "de minimis" or other 40K or Harry Potter bad Latin.

I did a big binge stocking up of UK products last spring and summer before the tariffs hit.

By now, most of the UK game companies have adjusted to collect the tariffs during checkout, which works fine.

The big hurt is EBay where I am no longer purchasing from overseas sellers. Which is a bummer, because nearly all of the DBA armies and a good assortment of various painted figures come up from the UK. They don't have a system for collecting the tariffs, and I'm not going to risk having to pay it later at this end.

Customs was short-handed before this insanity was dumped on them. There are reports of backlogs of packages are just getting trashed. Delivery services can slap on whatever processing fees they feel like to get the packages cleared through. Ugh.
X_x

Are we winning the trade war against the world yet?

I was looking at some interesting stuff on Etsy.
8 SYW cavalry figures, but the shipping from Kazakhstan was $245. USD 🙄
They weren't THAT interesting…

I'm with you, John. I have more than enough to paint without getting more.

Jim