November 10, 2024: The Reality Of Tariffs In Tabletop Gaming

[RoboAdmin]

November 10, 2024: The Reality Of Tariffs In Tabletop Gaming

Read this article on the Illuminator.

[johndallman]

Applause for a realistic and considered explanation.

[andreww]

Really well stated.

How anyone can believe that anyone other than the consumer is paying the tariffs I don't know. Would you pay to go to work?

Tariffs are a sales tax, and all sales taxes are regressive. Tariffs will hit struggling families and small businesses worse than the big players.

I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that far less gets done than has been talked about. And learn how to be vocal...

[stefanj]

Thank you for explaining, and speaking out.


We -- consumers as well as manufacturers -- are in for a world of hurt due to the misunderstanding of how tariffs work and who they will effect.



If anybody needs to look up the email addresses and office phone numbers of elected officials, may I be so bold as to suggest this site:



https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials

[oma]

Tariffs are designed to be equalizers. We enjoy super low rates for things coming from China.

The THREAT of tariffs on many will cause a company to change its manufacturing processes. If not, then the tariff will result in making that product less competitive to something produced in this country.

For something that is not currently produced in this country, this has the effect of raising the price of that item and making it more likely to have competition enter that is locally sourced.

Tariffs are usually threats to elicit change, but in the end they may raise prices to make it possible to produce things in a richer, local economy.

I don't know how important it is to make things here rather than there when it is games, but I sure believe that high tech things should not be relied upon from China. Perhaps getting our reps to understand they should pressure the most important industries and leave the light hearted ones alone.

Targeted tariffs, as it were.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by oma

Tariffs are designed to be equalizers. We enjoy super low rates for things coming from China.

Tariffs can be used for various purposes, but in fundamental design they're just a tax on a particular class of economic activity, and like any such tax, it has two effects: it raises money, and it suppresses that that type of economic activity by making it more expensive to carry out. Broad tariffs tend to be relatively bad for the economy compared to other types of taxes that raise similar amounts of money, which is why they're disfavored in the modern world.

[Alden Loveshade]

I got to admit I wasn't fully aware of the tariff issue. Thanks for pointing that out.

Originally Posted by stefanj

If anybody needs to look up the email addresses and office phone numbers of elected officials, may I be so bold as to suggest this site:

https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials

This can work. Elected officials often check the numbers/statistics of what their constituents say.

[andreww]

SJG would be uniquely affected...

SJ Games has survived forty years of nonsense including the Secret Service Raid, they'll probably survive any coming tariffs. But there are other small companies without the advantages SJ Games enjoys, and they'll go away when their clever $15 card game goes to $25 and people feel like that's too much and buy something else.

Hopefully the tariffs will be small and targeted. People say lots of things during the election that evaporate later.

[NocTempre]

Originally Posted by andreww

How anyone can believe that anyone other than the consumer is paying the tariffs I don't know. Would you pay to go to work?

Money is pretty fungible so pointing to one variable is probably going to be an oversimplification. I don't know, but it seems like high freight yet lack of competitive local manufacturing points to something not working correctly already. A lot of proponents of tariffs claim they protect against an unfair race to the bottom.

SJG has put out a couple political posts this past week, and in my opinion, they weren't particularly presenting nor inviting sophisticated takes. That worries me a lot more than news of a necessary price hike. If it came to that, it doesn't seem like SJG would be uniquely affected, so they could move forward unburdened by what has been the status quo.

[Meredith]

Originally Posted by NocTempre

SJG has put out a couple political posts this past week, and in my opinion, they weren't particularly presenting nor inviting sophisticated takes. That worries me a lot more than news of a necessary price hike. If it came to that, it doesn't seem like SJG would be uniquely affected, so they could move forward unburdened by what has been the status quo.

Oh, how I wish that were the case. Remember, our biggest leaders are our board games - and the reality is that there are very few options for making board game components (especially plastics) at a competitive cost in the United States.

Books? Absolutely. Cards can be printed easily in the US as well. Since I became CEO, I've shifted quite a few of our book prints to US manufacturers. I'm actually a big fan of Made in America when and where I can.

We don't use a lot of plastic components in our games. Ogre and Car Wars are the two main ones that come to mind. But get this: a 2-part injection mold (which is the standard mold for the types of plastics we use in the gaming industry) usually starts at $90,000 and can run up to $250,000 for one mold here in the US. Overseas? $10,000-$15,000. (I do a lot of plastics with some of my other companies.)

The other real concern is if across-the-board tariffs are put into place. That means an extra tax on top of everything imported to the US - be it a finished product or the materials to make a product. The US is the second largest importer of paper (and paperboard). The cost of the paper our US manufacturers use to make our books here in the US will go up. Sure, it will have less impact than a broad tax on a finished item, but it's still an increase we have to bear the burden of.

Another thing I haven't seen many people talk about is just how long it takes to bring a factory online. Or where do we get the resources to manufacture an item if the core materials aren't even produced in the number we need stateside?

I've been planning for this potential eventuality for the last year. But my more considerable fear, outside of increasing the price of our games, is the expendable income the average American family will have to buy games when the cost of everything else goes up. That is more than just a problem for SJGames. It's a problem for the game industry at large.

However, as the CEO of SJGames, it was still my duty to inform you, our most ardent supporters, of the reality of the situation we collectively face.