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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cergorach" data-source="post: 9627288" data-attributes="member: 725">It's not just local capacity in the US, it's also ability and quality that are affected. When companies start printing in the US instead of China, expect to see some cases of (far) lower quality. About 10-15 years ago some people/companies wanted to start making hig quality (HIPS) plastic miniatures in NA. The problem was not only that no one was doing that professionally at any scale, the quality that adjacent industries provided was abysmal. Because making plastic boxes is different from making plastic models/miniatures. The knowledge in NA, especially the US had died out (in some cases literally). Companies went bankrupt reinventing the wheel in plastic miniature manufacturing. Some people even privately bought (secondhand) injection machines and started learning, some even lost fingers during that process...US based Reaper miniatures started doing KS to get their metal minis made in plastic (PVC), everything for the KS was still produced in China. Eventually they did well enough with the KS that they could afford the injection molding machine(s), but they still needed to train the people on them. And the initial KS fulfillment is so huge that they wouldn't be able to do that in any decent timeframe by themselves, so they still produced in China for the KS fulfillment, after that they got the molds shipped from China to the US to continue producing locally. Last time I checked they still did this, as no one in the US was able to produce the molds at the quality they wanted.I think Dream Pod 9 (Canadian) with their plastic (HIPS) miniatures for Heavy Gear also produced in NA (I think in the US, but am not sure). The quality wasn't good, armor plates that were supposed to be flat, were very pitted, not very sharp lines, etc.Yeah, there are still quite a few US central game companies out there that refuse to setup EU warehouses. I've had KS fulfillment that went from China to the US and then from the US individually shipped to the EU, the shipping fees were insane! SJ Games is an example that I still won't back, and local availability of their products tends to be hit or miss. As these companies have continued to give us the middle finger, I can't help but give the middle finger back at these times... It might not be nice, but what goes around, comes around.Some companies have improved over the years though. Maybe in time to get those products distributed outside of the US directly from China. Those that don't are going to feel the tariffs doubly so.That's such an unwise mentality: "Which side are you on?", as a business you're on your side. And how are you going to do that? In the case of tariffs between multiple parties, not by centrally producing your products, you produce your products in multiple locations. You can easily keep using the Chinese production partners for products for the rest of the world, just a smaller production run. For the US, you produce in the US.I remember that companies could put labels on their products "made in xyz" by just assembling the components there. What if you produced the individual components in China and assemble them in the UK? Would it then be the China tariff or the UK tariff?You can trust a company all you want, but when it stops existing, you still don't get any products...No, they work. That's why the last time this happened and the EU placed retaliatory tariffs on the US, those were quickly turned back due to those retaliatory tariffs. The problem with the US tariffs is that currently they are not there to influence foreign governments, but to influence their own population to buy locally, and produce locally. No matter how realistic that is, as shown by the US game companies having zero faith that they can transition to local production in a time frame that won't make them bankrupt.You do know that this will just shorten your lifespan as a business even further while draining your own coffers. Maybe start looking at local alternatives or foreign alternatives. Dream Pod 9 is Canadian, but I don't know if they don't produce anything in the US. Games Workshop is UK based, maybe talk to your GW representative and see what they plan to do with these US tariffs for Canadian customers. Maybe they'll start importing directly into Canada. Asmodee is European, they own a few American companies like Fantasy Flight Games and Atomic Games, maybe talk to your local Asmodee representative to see if you they can import directly from China (where the goods are produced without it going through the US. Heck, maybe a good opportunity to start a Canadian games distribution business that imports directly from China (from US companies)...If they pull up the price for everyone, they'll loose customers by droves in Europe.==================I expect that many smaller companies will not be able to find US based printers, and those that already do, will get pushed out by bigger companies/clients as they assert their influence. As prices rise, more people will resort to piracy, impacting the industry even further.Even if small companies buy POD equipment, that stuff tends to be produced in Asia. I see that a lot of printer companies are Japanese, even if you buy products produced in Japan, you get a 24% import tariff. That's still lower then the 54% from China...You're still stuck with thinks like paper, inkts/toner, etc. from mostly other places. The US doesn't produce enough paper locally to fulfill demand locally before the tariffs came into play, that has only gotten worse now. Maybe you can get your printing done in the UK at only a 10% tariff... But I think capacity there is also limited and I think more people will jump on that idea... I wonder if the current paper mills can scale up (enough) or if decommissioned paper mills will be resurrected?===================The hardest I'll be hit by this is when KS companies go belly up due to tariffs into the US, but not the rest of the world... I'm thinking CMON, that was already not doing finacially well.</blockquote>

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