Tracking toy tariffs

PanchaMaestro said:
But of course it doesn't end there. That dictatorship oversteps its ambition and crashes and burns.
Click to expand...

I mean... Napoleon was in power for nearly 20 years... and that was followed by another 30 years of Monarchy and nearly 20 additional years of Emperor (Napoleon III) France didn't become an actual sustained democracy until 1870. I'm not sure we want to look at that as a hopeful model for our potential future...

When democracies fall it takes a long time to get them back. When the republic fell in Rome it didn't see democracy again for almost 2,000 years.
 
Wow, this thread got dark since yesterday morning. Hate to admit it, but in my angrier, slightly younger days, way before Jan 6, I thought there should be a Jan 6 type of moment (aimed against the other side) complete with dragging politicians through the streets. Turns out I was wrong. It was rather ugly and distasteful with the horn guy, zip ties, smearing shit on walls like little monkeys etc etc. I'm still holding out hope that 2024 was just a once in a lifetime perfect storm of unserious voters who thought Trump was an amusing guy (beer with George W types) and economics-dumb people joining up with Repub diehards, racists, the phony religious, misogynists, gun nuts, and the immoral. Everything will work out as long as we have fair and honest elections 🙄
 
JakeEkiss said:
Yep, this is roughly in line with the timetable I was thinking after I heard the NPR story a couple of weeks ago. Starting this week the shipments thin out, by the end of the month we'll be running out of stock on things. By mid Summer it'll be impossible not to notice.
Click to expand...
apparently it is already happening now stocks are already getting lower
 
I took a couple of days off from the 'webz so let me sum up my thoughts on the last few pages:

Bobby Vala can sniff my anal vapor.

The guy with the gold toilet telling us that our kids can't have as many toys can do likewise.

Centrists and libertarians are just conservatives trying to have plausible deniability for the shit policies they consistently support.

As repulsive as most of us find violence to be, sometimes there's no alternative. I like to think we're not at that point, but if we aren't already, that event horizon is closing in pretty fucking quick. I quoted John Brown in the politics thread recently and I think we're going to have a meteor like him much sooner than later, for better or worse.
 
I know I'm late to the Vala talk, and I don't mean to take the discussion too far off course, but YouTube started suggesting a bunch of his videos to me a few weeks ago. Didn't really know who he was before- I'd heard of Valaverse before, but didn't know much beyond that. Long story short, I got through maybe one or two videos before something started rubbing me the wrong way about him. Watched a few more just to be sure, and I dunno- I still can't quite put my finger on it. I thought it was- and still kinda is- interesting to get honest insights about toy making from inside the industry, especially when most of our answers from places like Hasbro are the corporate legalese, but still, there's something I don't like there- an arrogance, maybe? Or a smugness? He's maybe a little too bro-y? And I realized that, beyond the interesting insights here and there, my enjoyment of him was surface level, and beyond that, it kinda just made me angry.

Anywho, regarding our current government, I'm definitely expecting a "the hyenas turning on Scar" moment when they realize their interests can no longer be served, whether that's fellow politicians, the military, etc.- it's just a matter of what condition the rest of the country/people are in when that happens.
 
vicious said:
If you're a "Centrist" like Bobby Vala who owns a business that is being nailed by tariffs that were originally outlined in Project 2025 and you still voted for Trump, you absolutely deserve it.
Click to expand...

Even these current tariffs on China or almost every other country don't rise to the level of what Navarro proposed in Project 2025. He said tariffs for every country should rise to the exact same rate that they impose tariffs on US exports.

From a simple perspective that seems only fair. In reality when we can produce more goods for lower prices it greatly expands our own power and influence relative to other countries. Doing this for key strategic markets like computer chips or rare earth metals makes sense, but doing it across the board is weirdly senseless for a country like ours that has historically low unemployment rates. I can't fully tell what's driving Navarro because he exaggerates too much for me to listen to. He's written multiple books and made several documentaries on this topic, but he exaggerates very much like Michael Moore does so I've never gotten much from his documentaries. For anyone interested one of his most famous docs is free on Youtube now titled "Death by China":


But even within the first five minutes you can tell how narrowly-focused and biased his angle is. I definitely agree with him that China is a huge threat, but not that returning manufacturing to the US is important. That's particularly true given how close we are to obsoleting human labor in manufacturing already, and how close we'll be by the time the US companies are hypothetically able to return manufacturing to the US.

And by the way no smart CEO is going to return manufacturing to the US solely based upon Trump's current tariffs. Doing tariffs via executive order is TERRIBLE policy, and enough Republicans are opposing them to prevent new tariffs from passing Congress and becoming permanent. Why would Chris Cocks (Hasbro CEO), Ynon Kreiz (Mattel CEO), or even Bobby Vala shift production to the US knowing that Trump himself--or the next likely Democratic president--can easily just reverse those tariffs? They wouldn't, which is why they're all just waiting this out. Trump is tanking the economy for what right now will have no short OR long-term payoff. :rolleyes: Note that Bobby Vala in his tariff video never ONCE mentioned returning manufacturing to the US. I'm sure what he'll actually do is one of two things--cheat to circumvent the tarffis by first shipping them to some country with low tariff rates and perform some trivial refinement to them there to comply with tariff law, or shift production to another Third World nation. Both of those options are far cheaper than producing goods in the US.
 
Last edited:
SDcomics said:
Runaway prices and shortages for goods and food?

Coming real soon.
Click to expand...

Why would we have a food shortage anytime soon? We produce most of our food here, and the items we import are mostly luxury items that we COULD produce here but instead import during off-season months just so we have apples, oranges, grapes, etc on the grocery store shelves year-round instead of only when they're in season.

We're incredibly far away from any of the conditions that led to the French Revolution. Are we headed in the direction France was in at that time? Broadly, yes. But we're nowhere near those conditions, and democracy is still in place and hasn't really come close to failing yet, although I realize there are plenty of people panicking as if we're living in a dictatorship when we're not. There's nothing Musk, Trump, Miller, or any other person currently in power have done or are threatening to do that the 2026, 2028, or even 2032 or 2036 elections can't solve.
 
JakeEkiss said:
I have bad news for you...
Click to expand...

Even if North Carolina does get Jefferson Griffin into the state's Supreme Court--which will be the single most undemocratic election manipulation of anyone's lifetime alive today in the US--it's still too early to panic. But action definitely does need to happen if the federal judge deciding this case makes a partisan decision.

That decision should arrive this week. It's definitely one to watch, and if you're unfamiliar with this election and actually are worried about the future of US democracy then I strongly suggest reading about it. Griffin's Wikipedia page has a great overview of it:

Jefferson Griffin - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
Has anybody figured out what the most in-demand items will be in a few months once the tariff-affected goods start running out? It's not panicking to buy those things now.

Not much we can do about toys. Anything I can buy now that my kids want will have changed by the time Christmas gets here so no point in doing Christmas shopping early. I'm 50/50 on upgrading my Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ released in 2019 to a new model. Trump exempted phones from tariffs, but I still wouldn't be surprised if some ancillary effect of the tariffs makes them in somewhat short supply in a few months. Anyone who needs new electronics or appliances besides computers should DEFINITELY buy those now though, and shopping now for any fall and winter clothes is a generally good idea since the vast majority of those come from China.

I feel like I'm overlooking some staple besides clothes though that comes from China. Food should be fine...what am I missing? :unsure:
 
I haven't been following all this because it would just piss me off, but I saw a video that said Super7 is charging tarrif fee's on in-stock items. Items that weren't subjected to new tarrifs. Checked it out myself and it's true. That's super-shady and pure b.s. and as far as I'm concerned, a big FU to their customers.
 
TFitz said:
I haven't been following all this because it would just piss me off, but I saw a video that said Super7 is charging tarrif fee's on in-stock items. Items that weren't subjected to new tarrifs. Checked it out myself and it's true. That's super-shady and pure b.s. and as far as I'm concerned, a big FU to their customers.
Click to expand...

Vala referred in his tariff video to another toy company who prices higher than him with inferior product. He didn't name them, but I immediately assumed he meant Super7. I don't own any of their stuff so I could easily be wrong, but I've watched a few reviews and am still surprised they charge as much as they do with such basic articulation.
 
Last edited:
Well, if Super7 is expecting costs to rise for them (they already have, no?), I can see them trying to spread those costs out over existing product as well. I don't think it's shady as much as trying to survive in this uncertain future. Frankly, I never buy anything of their's at full price anyway and always wait for sales. Word on the street is Super7 is not going to have a booth at SDCC this year. Which if true makes sense as a cost cutting effort. Those booths can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Since they already have an off-campus store in San Diego, not having a booth is understandable.
 
Yeah, I said something similar a page or two back. These companies are having their entire revenue streams cut off at the knees, and I assume the smaller guys don't have a ton of savings to warehouse everything and ride out the storm. They're not being shady - they're desperate.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top