New Tariffs On RPGs Printed In China

If this has a noticeable impact, then it will be interesting to watch as people realize just how much of their lives comes from this one country.

Tariffs will impact some published games (Star Wars) but not others (Star Trek Adventures). Maybe it will entice game manufacturers to move more business to Europe over Asia.

On a game I'm interested in, the tariffs shouldn't effect the Shadowrun 6e Beginners Box, as it is scheduled for release in June and should be here soon (if not already). However, it could impact the Shadowrun 6e Core Rulebook (scheduled for release at Gen Con in August). Based on their previous fiscal decisions, I'm confident Catalyst Game Labs (CGL) will pass the cost onto the consumer, as they already cut major corners in every other facet of book production (editing, errata, layout, and binding to name a few). I would love it if they would allow the book to be printed in Germany, where they have a personal attachment to the game. I woudl pay more for a book that doesn't fall apart quickly.

- Chris

CM said:

This is going to affect Reaper's next Bones kickstarter too, I'm sure.

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In their first KS, they talked about setting up the equipment to manufacture bones minis themselves. Unfortunately this only came to pass in their base mass production KS. Hopefully this will cause them to rethink going to China and building up their own manufacturing capacity instead and make the minis in the US. (Which would also save them many of teh shipping/customs headaches they've dealt with in the past)

Crystal Frasier, formerly of Paizo Publishing and currently part of Green Ronin, had some thoughts on this:

Crystal Frasier said:

Trump’s new tariffs are going to tear a huge chunk out of the RPG profits, basically eliminating the cost advantage of printing in China. I wouldn’t be surprised if we started losing small & medium-sized companies b/c of them.

Getting more info on the tariffs, which aren't hitting RPG books this round but will likely hit in July.

It sounds like a $40 RPG book will have about a $2 tariff. Which doesn't SOUND bad, until you realize that RPGs are typically sold to retailers at 50% MSRP, so $2 represents 10% of the revenue, before figuring in production and printing costs.

If a publisher DOESN'T raise their prices, then they're eating that $2. Over a 5,000 book print run, they're eating $10,000 for the sake of a moron's dick-waggling contest.

Do you pass that cost on to retailers? FLGS are already struggling, and bigger stores have only just started carrying RPGs and won't hesitate to cut this weird new thing.

Pass it on to the consumers? Maybe, but they're not magically making more money all of a sudden, either.

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Can we be done "winning" now?

ccs said:

Sorry, I just don't see that happening.

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It would likely run afoul of political interpretation, but I have seen non-political non-biases analysis, economic or otherwise, before.

stargazera5 said:

In their first KS, they talked about setting up the equipment to manufacture bones minis themselves. Unfortunately this only came to pass in their base mass production KS. Hopefully this will cause them to rethink going to China and building up their own manufacturing capacity instead and make the minis in the US. (Which would also save them many of teh shipping/customs headaches they've dealt with in the past)

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I heard that they were buying the molds and bringing them to the US after fulfilling the initial kickstarter orders. Not sure if that's true. Will ask about it on the Reaper Live chat tomorrow night.

dave2008 said:

It would likely run afoul of political interpretation, but I have seen non-political non-biases analysis, economic or otherwise, before.

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The statement that started this ball rolling centered around a non economic reason for the tariffs. Their use as a means of coercing a "better deal" out of China. This is not economics.

Economically tariffs are rarely effective at doing more than raising prices on your own consumers.

The basic idea being that local producers will be able to compete with foreign products due to the increased price of foreign goods. This impacts the foreign producer (the Law of Demand says it all, the higher the price the lower the demand, who will sell fewer) and it allows a domestic producer to compete at the new higher price. And consumers carry the weight by paying more.

The effect of increasing domestic sales is rarely worth the increased cost consumers pay. The standard argument for tariffs is that it protects / produces jobs and industry. People are always in favor of "saving" someone's job. They rarely understand the increased costs that all consumers pay for this, or that the loss of purchasing power they suffer is greater than the economic value of the limited amount of jobs / industrial capacity "saved".

Ultimately tariffs are a barrier to international trade that effectively makes those on the business end (that would be us, the consumers) poorer. If you think there is any economic function for them... I have a bridge in Brooklyn you might want to buy. The one legitimate, imho, economic function for tariffs is maintaining an industry which is strategic / necessary. I doubt the RPG market is one of them. Other possible uses are matters of domestic politics or international relations.

Having said this, I just hope my students remember this for their Macroeconomics final exam next week... a ha! Teachable moment coming up

*edit* You could natter on about this for ages, but I think most economists would agree with the basics outlined above. Politicians, of course, are another animal entirely and often find reasons to evade the facts, or disagree with the opinions of economists. As with all things, ymmv. My graduate degree is in history btw, I teach AP Government (Political Science), AP Macroeconomics and college history classes (B-17A and B-17B U.S. history surveys) at the moment. I am, in essence, an informed layman, not an economist. Hence this note / edit.

It's difficult to talk about this stuff but not get into the politics of it.

Tariffs have their time and place, some being beneficial and some are not that beneficial.

It boils down to the REASONS for the tariffs and HOW they affect things.

A big thing that could be argued about the ways trade has been occurring between the US and other nations with free trade for the past 2 decades can deal directly with the idea of the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, and the middle class getting smaller. Tariffs CAN BE ONE WAY to change this direction, where you grow the middle class, and even out the differences between the rich and poor. Of course, this can also be done via many various taxes in many various ways.

These are things that the EU has dealt with, and indeed, one could argue one of the reasons the EU has banded together in regards to these types of ideas.

However, to get into the specifics, especially with how strongly people feel about the divide economically of different classes in the economic realm, vs. those in power and those not in power, as well as the impacts of such would probably get too close to politics for any comfort of discussion in this forum.

Tariffs are not necessarily a BAD thing. This does not mean they are necessarily a GOOD thing either.

What is interesting is how it might impact the EU. People may think because they live across the water that it will only impact Americans. However, at least in England, what may be $50 in the US, seems to translate to £50 in the UK...or €50 in Europe major. It should only be around £40 in England if you actually figure out equivalent costs and €45 in Europe...but the kinks seem to regulate it higher. There are various reasons for this, but overall it's because they are set to have a certain number seen, and represented in many cases (or so it seems).

So...if prices RISE in the US...so let's say RPG books suddenly are selling for $70 in the US, will that mean they will find it acceptable to charge £70 overseas, or €70?

Implications can be interesting when considering how reflective costs seem in numbers in relation to US retail prices compared to Europe's prices.

R_Chance said:

The statement that started this ball rolling centered around a non economic reason for the tariffs. Their use as a means of coercing a "better deal" out of China. This is not economics.

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That is incorrect. What started the comments about analysis was this comment in post #8 by [MENTION=6959635]Trastone[/MENTION]: "I love how people’s comments are so overly simplified about what is going on."

Then my reply (and similar others) that I was not expecting detail analysis from the economic impact of tariffs from an RPG site.

One thing you have to remember when comparing US prices to EU prices is that EU prices usually include VAT at varying rates (zero on books in the UK, but higher in Germany for example) whereas US prices typically don't factor in US taxes as they vary by State and city (unless you are using Amazon of course).