News/Views
A Sad Day for Photographers in the US
President Trump this afternoon finally announced his "reciprocal" tariffs, and it's not good news for photography fans in the US.
Managers at the Japanese camera makers are all currently huddled around big tables trying to figure out how they're going to weather the massive tariffs against their products in a market that comprises about a quarter of their sales. Meanwhile camera dealers across the US are already looking at the recent small uptick in sales with fond memories.
As with anything Trump, the details seem murky, somewhat contradictory, and subject to change, but the way things are being read right now is that starting on April 9th, shipments to the US are subject to:
- 24% tariff on imports from Japan
- 36% tariff on imports from Thailand
- 46% tariff on imports from Vietnam
- 34% tariff on imports from China
(Note that as I write this, various publications are reporting different numbers for China and different interpretations of how the new 10% tariff on everything works with the reciprocal tariffs. If you'd like to read the actual declaration Trump made, you can find it at whitehouse.gov.)
Canon has a majority of their production in Japan. Nikon has the majority of its production in Thailand. Sony manufactures in both those countries. OM Digital Solutions manufactures in Vietnam. So you can see that someone's going to be taking it on the chin, perhaps everyone. Note that Nikon's Z5II announcement was likely priced with some potential tariff accommodation in mind, but I can assure you Nikon was not expecting 36% tariffs on their gear coming into the US. I suppose the only good news for camera makers is that smartphone makers are also locked into the same nonsense.
Interchangeable lens cameras have not been made in the US since Kodak cancelled the SLR/n over nearing two decades ago (and that was basically reassembling a Nikon DSLR into an American made body). We're not likely to get anyone thinking about making them again, even with substantive tariffs in place, so for photographers, the tariffs really represent a new tax on gear. A tax that is likely to be constantly changing as the administration starts to discover exactly what chaos they're creating and tries to adjust their toupees policies. Of course, they don't care about the camera market—it's not big enough to offset anything they want to do—so it may be worse for photography than it is for other markets that have some sort of leverage to trigger renegotiations.
You may remember that after the US election last fall, I cancelled plans for changes and expansions to my business. I anticipated this chaos. You cannot plan into total uncertainty; the likelihood that you'll waste both your time and money is not just high, but presumable. As it is, retaliation by other countries will likely impact my ebook business, and I may have to put a geofence on purchases because of that (a one person business cannot easily handle 200+ reciprocal grudge tariffs).
While I try to avoid political discussions, today's announcement reminds me that most people don't know the difference between ignorant and stupid. Ignorance is when you don't know that you shouldn't do something. Stupidity is when you shouldn't do it and know what the outcome is likely to be, but you do it anyway. The US's newly stated tariff policies are stupid.
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Oh, you wanted the bulleted bottom line? Then:
- Camera gear in the US will get more expensive because it will all be tariffed.
- Predicting what you'll have to pay for new gear will get impossible as tariffs may change, and if inventory piles up, there will have to be sales of some sort.
- More camera dealers will close their doors because they live off of sales turns, and those will go down at higher prices.
- Many items will get harder to find in stock as camera companies shift new product shipments to non-tariff nations.
- Repairs will take longer, as no camera subsidiary wants to bring in extra parts they have to pay tariffs on.
- Repairs will cost more, as the tariff has to be recovered for the part that they waited for.
- Camera companies will listen to American customers less, as we'll be a smaller part of their overall sales.
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