US Tariffs: $80-$200 Surcharge On All Packages Regardless of Price

[kronovan]

....Wonder if companies are reconsidering that approach and move the distribution for the Americas to Canada and leave the US to service the US only, and how easy that would be to actually do

Well that's the way we had it here in Canada up until the early 90s, before the days of free trade. A number of USA and other Nation's transnational corps had corporate branches here - usually in Greater Toronto or Monreal. And there were distribution/trade centers attached to many of them. Some of the distribution centers were a consortium of a number of companies - especially true for corps that were HQ'd in emergent economies like Japan. And of course their were Canadian owned and established trade/distribution centers. All the major book publishers typically had a corporate branch here and IIRC many (certainly more than now) of their books were printed and bound here.

The problem was that products always cost more than they did in their country of origin, even after accounting for the difference in exchange rate. The corporate branch and branch distribution center overhead no doubt added a lot of costs on top of the shipping. Some countries were much better at it though - Japan Corps in particular seemed to be true masters at making the system work for electronic products and autos. As well, we had far more access to products from the UK - my Canadian city was the pacific port for the British Empires' red line trade route, and the trade infrastructure built by it was still a factor in the 80s. It's one of my few regrets about N.A. free trade, that UK products have generally been less available and affordable since.

 

[Ulfgeir]

If any of the people here who reside in the US are waiting for packages from Europe or other places, you will probably have to wait a lot longer. Many of the postal services here have suspended shipping of packages to the US until new systems are put in place for handling the tariffs.

Transport Topics
CNN
BBC
Reuters

 

[bedir than]

As mentioned up thread, this will likely boost PDF sales. Companies save on physical production and distribution; customers can save if the publishers don’t try to charge ridiculous amounts.

I wouldn't count on software and PDFs to not be tariffed.
The administration put out a tariff on movies earlier this year.

 

[mamba]

I wouldn't count on software and PDFs to not be tariffed.

how is that supposed to work, I download them from some site and no one knows anything about it, and I do not know if it is hosted in the US or not either

The administration put out a tariff on movies earlier this year.

the production of, not the purchase / viewing, and it didn't go anywhere

 

[bedir than]

how is that supposed to work, I download them from some site and no one knows anything about it, and I do not know if it is hosted in the US or not either

They didn't know how to get de minimis to work either.
Do not expect rational decisions during this trade war that consistently declares raising prices by 15%+ as a win for consumers who are now paying more.

 

[mamba]

They didn't know how to get de minimis to work either.

the difference is that they do 'know' of every package coming in, they know nothing about what people download

We can spin this even further, when I buy a car, either the whole thing was imported or parts were imported and taxed at that time, all of that is relatively easy to track. How much of, say, MS Word was developed in the US, vs India, and how do you tax that?

Do not expect rational decisions during this trade war that consistently declares raising prices by 15%+ as a win for consumers who are now paying more.

I am not, Trump might very well post another deranged tweet about this, I am talking about the implementation of the deranged intent. Just like the movie tweet, there will be no follow-up (and that one even is theoretically possible to enforce, it just is really stupid and harmful to do so)

 

[UngainlyTitan]

the difference is that they do 'know' of every package coming in, they know nothing about what people download

We can spin this even further, when I buy a car, either the whole thing was imported or parts were imported and taxed at that time, all of that is relatively easy to track. How much of, say, MS Word was developed in the US, vs India, and how do you tax that?


I am not, Trump might very well post another deranged tweet about this, I am talking about the implementation of the deranged intent. Just like the movie tweet, there will be no follow-up (and that one even is theoretically possible to enforce, it just is really stupid and harmful to do so)

I there is a way to track it, I could see a huge surge in VPN usage in the US.

 

[bedir than]

the difference is that they do 'know' of every package coming in, they know nothing about what people download

We can spin this even further, when I buy a car, either the whole thing was imported or parts were imported and taxed at that time, all of that is relatively easy to track. How much of, say, MS Word was developed in the US, vs India, and how do you tax that?


I am not, Trump might very well post another deranged tweet about this, I am talking about the implementation of the deranged intent. Just like the movie tweet, there will be no follow-up (and that one even is theoretically possible to enforce, it just is really stupid and harmful to do so)

What's happening right now is impossible to support, which is why most major carriers and nations are cancelling shipping to the US

 

[mamba]

What's happening right now is impossible to support, which is why most major carriers and nations are cancelling shipping to the US

I mean, worst case everything gets held up in customs and you pay your $80 or whatever when they contact you and ask you to pick it up. The problem is not how to do it, it is volume

 

[Nikosandros]

the difference is that they do 'know' of every package coming in, they know nothing about what people download

Digital purchases can be taxed and they often are. When I buy something from D&D Beyond, I get charged the Italian IVA (a value added tax) for digital books.