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This is probably going to kill a lot of the smaller companies. GW is both big enough and stable enough to survive anything short of the UK collapsing.

Their competition though? Expect a lot of them to go extinct.

robbienw wrote:
US GW fans, prepare for your price rise to cover the tariff costs.

At least its not the 20% that the EU got! Thanks Brexiteers!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

I sometimes buy MTG, and more often buy Hasbro Star Wars figures.

Both are US companies, both have production done overseas.

They're the same company. WotC sales are increasingly important in keeping Hasbro where it is in the market.

Sure glad GW closed their Canadian warehouse so we Canucks can pay 10% more to route through the States.

Bad time for me to get back into 40K.

Statement from SJG : https://mailchi.mp/5d92567e311b/tariffs-are-driving-up-game-prices-now?e=da46fe44e0

However, this quote is worth mentioning: "But the infrastructure to support full-scale boardgame production – specialty dice making, die-cutting, custom plastic and wood components – doesn't meaningfully exist here yet."

That's the problem. That's the problem some have had for *decades* about China. China's strategy is to own the infrastructure, often by subsidies and dumping, not just for gaming, but everything "Made in China". Got something "Made in China"? Well, odds are your country -- not just the USA -- can't afford to make it anymore b/c China owns the market.

Tariffs certainly won't create infrastructure overnight. Yet we've had all this time -- and I don't mean USA-only manufacturing -- for countries whose policies align more closely with [insert your country here] (I mean, not all countries with cheap labor practice ethnic cleansing or want to invade some other country) for [insert your country here] to create better trade relations, but haven't. Glad I bought enough cheap landfill to game with for the next few decades. :/

...And if you want to help, write to your elected officials. You can find your representative and senators' contact information at house.gov and senate.gov. Ask them how these new policies help American creators and small businesses....

Something tells me they'll explain that 1 + 1 equals the Misssissippi River which is exactly why we need these tariffs now(for some reason). I have a guess that anyone who does so had to repeat grades multiple times, particularly in economics....

Catalyst Game Labs posted Catalyst and Tariffs about a month ago:

Catalyst Game Labs wrote:Like many of you, the Catalyst Game Labs team has been watching recent economic developments. We have been hard at work developing strategies that would make our position more resilient to the rapidly changing world trade dynamics that we have been seeing.

Like much of the tabletop gaming industry, Catalyst gets hit especially hard by trade tariffs. Our industry is inherently international in nature. We are lucky that we have been able to be flexible with pricing in the past decade. However recent changes with the market have shown us that our flexibility was not quite prepared for a change of this magnitude.

With the current level of economic uncertainty, we have to make some tough decisions. In the next 60 days we will be releasing a comprehensive update for this process, including some unfortunately necessary price adjustments. These price adjustments will be applied to new products and product reprints that are directly affected by tariffs. As we adjust to this new situation, we will likely expand this policy across our entire product line in order to average out increases. We are working hard to ensure that we can keep or even improve our value contribution to you and your game tables. We have prided ourselves on maintaining our relationship with you and your local game stores throughout Catalyst Game Labs’ history and we will hope to continue that trend in the years to come.

The CGL team would like to thank you for sticking with us as we all work through this uncertain future together. We are happy to share our games with all of you and want to see our community grow through a shared love of the IPs and games we steward.

 ced1106 wrote:
Statement from SJG : https://mailchi.mp/5d92567e311b/tariffs-are-driving-up-game-prices-now?e=da46fe44e0

However, this quote is worth mentioning: "But the infrastructure to support full-scale boardgame production – specialty dice making, die-cutting, custom plastic and wood components – doesn't meaningfully exist here yet."

That's the problem. That's the problem some have had for *decades* about China. China's strategy is to own the infrastructure, often by subsidies and dumping, not just for gaming, but everything "Made in China". Got something "Made in China"? Well, odds are your country -- not just the USA -- can't afford to make it anymore b/c China owns the market.

Tariffs certainly won't create infrastructure overnight. Yet we've had all this time -- and I don't mean USA-only manufacturing -- for countries whose policies align more closely with [insert your country here] (I mean, not all countries with cheap labor practice ethnic cleansing or want to invade some other country) for [insert your country here] to create better trade relations, but haven't. Glad I bought enough cheap landfill to game with for the next few decades. :/

Tabletop gaming is a niche industry, you could never justify everyone having their own tabletop infrastructure, it was always going to be either an internationally distributed infrastucture and logistics network, or we simply do not get to have tabletop gaming as costs ballon outside affordability.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Well, GW does have its US factory. What its capacity is, I dunno. Nor whether it can source the raw materials from US suppliers. Nor do we know how feasible it might be for GW to “simply” increase its range and capacity. Certainly the company has the money to do that, but there is, naturally, a good deal more to it than that.

But all those manufacturers who get it made in China might be in for a rough time.

Plenty of supply of Polystyrene in the US, although I suspect capacity will become an issue once pharmaceutical companies increase domestic manufacturing. CDMOs sporadically purchase tons at a time, at least the ones who do their own package manufacturing.

What I'm more concerned about is the cost of Codexes. GW has been printing them in China, and the US is closing loopholes related to country of origin. Unless the entire book is printed in the UK, it's taxed as if it's from China.

In the back of my head, I have a red line when it comes to infantry models. If the cost per model goes past $5, that's going to trigger my exploitive pricing flag. A basic battleline miniature must remain below the price of a decent cheeseburger for me to see value in buying a box of them.

 nels1031 wrote:

robbienw wrote:
US GW fans, prepare for your price rise to cover the tariff costs.

At least its not the 20% that the EU got! Thanks Brexiteers!

EU prices didn't go up at all from Brexit

 ced1106 wrote:


That's the problem. That's the problem some have had for *decades* about China. China's strategy is to own the infrastructure, often by subsidies and dumping, not just for gaming, but everything "Made in China". Got something "Made in China"? Well, odds are your country -- not just the USA -- can't afford to make it anymore b/c China owns the market.

China didn't make anyone kill their own industry, your own dumbgak capitalist class did that.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 nels1031 wrote:

robbienw wrote:
US GW fans, prepare for your price rise to cover the tariff costs.

At least its not the 20% that the EU got! Thanks Brexiteers!

EU prices didn't go up at all from Brexit

The reference was to the Tarif; EU is tariffed at 20%, Britain at 10%. As a result of Brexit, US prices on many GW products will go up by 10% instead of 20%.

 PenitentJake wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 nels1031 wrote:

robbienw wrote:
US GW fans, prepare for your price rise to cover the tariff costs.

At least its not the 20% that the EU got! Thanks Brexiteers!

EU prices didn't go up at all from Brexit

The reference was to the Tarif; EU is tariffed at 20%, Britain at 10%. As a result of Brexit, US prices on many GW products will go up by 10% instead of 20%.

Bingo!

Australia got the minimum 10% tariff, but how it will respond to US products is yet to be formally announced afaik.

But I haven't bought anything produced in the US for a very long time, and if I looked at what products I do have, I don't think more than 1% was from the US and it was often a reseller that had a sale and was unusually cheaper (US shipping is the main killer).

My consumption isn't that high anymore, but the things I do get are from Japan, China and the UK usually.

Unless everyone is going into tariff freeforall, everything else should be BAU. Unless they try to ameliorate the costs of the US tariffs by increasing costs into all other markets to spread the increase out, but that also depends on how the tariff burden shakes out between the internal US sellers and the suppliers.

 ced1106 wrote:
Statement from SJG : https://mailchi.mp/5d92567e311b/tariffs-are-driving-up-game-prices-now?e=da46fe44e0

However, this quote is worth mentioning: "But the infrastructure to support full-scale boardgame production – specialty dice making, die-cutting, custom plastic and wood components – doesn't meaningfully exist here yet."

That's the problem. That's the problem some have had for *decades* about China. China's strategy is to own the infrastructure, often by subsidies and dumping, not just for gaming, but everything "Made in China". Got something "Made in China"? Well, odds are your country -- not just the USA -- can't afford to make it anymore b/c China owns the market.

Tariffs certainly won't create infrastructure overnight. Yet we've had all this time -- and I don't mean USA-only manufacturing -- for countries whose policies align more closely with [insert your country here] (I mean, not all countries with cheap labor practice ethnic cleansing or want to invade some other country) for [insert your country here] to create better trade relations, but haven't. Glad I bought enough cheap landfill to game with for the next few decades. :/

TLDR on the SJG tears.... it will cost $1.62 more for us to use Chinese slave labor, so we will have to increase the price $15.

These tariffs are just a tactic to get other Countries to drop their tariffs on stuff that *is* made in the USA.

They won't be around as long as the fearmongers want you to think.

The thing is we've seen that many companies, once a price rises, will still keep the inflated price even if the original cause of the rise is removed.

Sometimes its because they raised the price by only part of what was needed to cover the increased cost and were taking a cut on profits for the other part; so they feel like they should recover that loss after the event is over - and then the prices just stick.

Sometimes (many times) its because whilst they'd be happy to go back to the original prices; other firms in their network aren't doing so. So they are left still with increased costs of operation because other firms have reason to not lower the prices.


And sometimes its because many things are priced at "what we think we can get away with" and if a higher price keeps generating reliable healthy sales then why lower it. Yes that can be a slippery slope situation, but its a cornerstone of consumerism and free markets and stuff

 TalonZahn wrote:

 ced1106 wrote:
Statement from SJG : https://mailchi.mp/5d92567e311b/tariffs-are-driving-up-game-prices-now?e=da46fe44e0

However, this quote is worth mentioning: "But the infrastructure to support full-scale boardgame production – specialty dice making, die-cutting, custom plastic and wood components – doesn't meaningfully exist here yet."

That's the problem. That's the problem some have had for *decades* about China. China's strategy is to own the infrastructure, often by subsidies and dumping, not just for gaming, but everything "Made in China". Got something "Made in China"? Well, odds are your country -- not just the USA -- can't afford to make it anymore b/c China owns the market.

Tariffs certainly won't create infrastructure overnight. Yet we've had all this time -- and I don't mean USA-only manufacturing -- for countries whose policies align more closely with [insert your country here] (I mean, not all countries with cheap labor practice ethnic cleansing or want to invade some other country) for [insert your country here] to create better trade relations, but haven't. Glad I bought enough cheap landfill to game with for the next few decades. :/

TLDR on the SJG tears.... it will cost $1.62 more for us to use Chinese slave labor, so we will have to increase the price $15.

These tariffs are just a tactic to get other Countries to drop their tariffs on stuff that *is* made in the USA.

They won't be around as long as the fearmongers want you to think.

The tariffs have nothing to do with tariffs on US stuff, as they are literally just Cost of goods sold to country A/Cost of goods brought from country A all divided by two. It doesn't take into account local tariffs, or that a country might sell the US more goods but then hire services from them. It's literally just "do they sell us more than we sell them", and there's a strong case that someone just asked ChatGPT for this as most of the major ones seem to kick out this formula for some reason.

The AI reason is also the most likely reason why the weird islands got included, hence why US military bases on otherwise uninhabited islands got hit by some of the largest tariffs as well as Antarctic islands with no permanent residents who are not penguins.

Other countries are only going to raise tariffs because of this, but there's apparently only one person in the US cabinet other than Trump that is in favour of this so there's a fair chance that Lietner will get thrown under the bus and Trump will back down. The crash in the stock market and decrease in currency fees is the market reacting to quite how stupid and unexpected this tariff regime is compared to what they were expecting - we'll probably see another drop over the next week as the rest of the world considers it's response.

Somewhat inexplicably, whilst places like places like Cambodia, which have a free trade agreement with the US and have no import tariffs have been hit with a 49% tariff for some reason (by which I mean average wage is too low to afford the high tech consumer goods the US exports but they do export some raw materials the US buys) oddly Russia has been hit with a 0% tariff despite them actually having a 15% import tax on all foreign goods...

 TalonZahn wrote:

 ced1106 wrote:
Statement from SJG : https://mailchi.mp/5d92567e311b/tariffs-are-driving-up-game-prices-now?e=da46fe44e0

However, this quote is worth mentioning: "But the infrastructure to support full-scale boardgame production – specialty dice making, die-cutting, custom plastic and wood components – doesn't meaningfully exist here yet."

That's the problem. That's the problem some have had for *decades* about China. China's strategy is to own the infrastructure, often by subsidies and dumping, not just for gaming, but everything "Made in China". Got something "Made in China"? Well, odds are your country -- not just the USA -- can't afford to make it anymore b/c China owns the market.

Tariffs certainly won't create infrastructure overnight. Yet we've had all this time -- and I don't mean USA-only manufacturing -- for countries whose policies align more closely with [insert your country here] (I mean, not all countries with cheap labor practice ethnic cleansing or want to invade some other country) for [insert your country here] to create better trade relations, but haven't. Glad I bought enough cheap landfill to game with for the next few decades. :/

TLDR on the SJG tears.... it will cost $1.62 more for us to use Chinese slave labor, so we will have to increase the price $15.

These tariffs are just a tactic to get other Countries to drop their tariffs on stuff that *is* made in the USA.

They won't be around as long as the fearmongers want you to think.

This is precisely it. A year from now the internet will be filled with forum conversations by economic experts that in retrospect didn't know as much as they thought they did. If China thinks it has a bigger economy than the US, or that its economy is built on fewer lies than the US' is, well good luck with that. When Catalyst doesn't order more product from Liya this year because everyone sees their updated prices and doubles over laughing, that will represent 0.00000000001% of the damage China is going to be feeling in general. So I'm not too worried about my hobby being disrupted in the long term. Worst case scenario for me is I'll take all my unopened boxes of minis and turn the spare bedroom into an impromptu GW store where tariffs don't apply. I'll probably need some display shelving though, hopefully the tariffs on Sweden aren't too bad.

Do more reading Tasty, Canada leverages some HUGE tariffs on certain U.S. products.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Well, GW does have its US factory. What its capacity is, I dunno. Nor whether it can source the raw materials from US suppliers. Nor do we know how feasible it might be for GW to “simply” increase its range and capacity. Certainly the company has the money to do that, but there is, naturally, a good deal more to it than that.

But all those manufacturers who get it made in China might be in for a rough time.

Incorrect. The US factory closed like 15 years ago. There were issues w the operations there and it wasnt financially viable or whatever.

 TalonZahn wrote:
Do more reading Tasty, Canada leverages some HUGE tariffs on certain U.S. products.

You mean like the 200-something% tariff on dairy products... that has never been applied because it doesnt kick in until a certain import threshold is reached in a given year, but the threshold is so high that its never even cime close to being a factor?

A lot of the supposed tariffs on US goods are irrelevant, likd Germanys tariffs on American cars - most american cars dont meet EU emissions or safety standards and cant be sold in Germany, so the tariffs exist on paper more than they do in actuality. Same deal w canadian tariffs on american cars actually.

The entire thesis for these tariffs is just dumb. Canada for example is a country of 40 million people, yet they consume a disproportionate amount of american goids, something like $7000 per person on average, whereas americans only consume about $1200 of canadian goods per capita. Canada isnt screwing the US on trade, the US is screwing Canada.

The U.S. accounts for at *least* 25% of Canada's GDP and over 45% of Mexico's. Those 2 combined account for about 1.2% of the U.S. GDP.

The tariffs on the EU have more to do with NATO spending.

I guess if you're cool propping up half the world and killing production in the U.S. for the last 30+ years, fine by me.

Jim Cramer just said the tariffs won't work, so that's a 100% guarantee they will.

 TalonZahn wrote:


TLDR on the SJG tears.... it will cost $1.62 more for us to use Chinese slave labor, so we will have to increase the price $15.

These tariffs are just a tactic to get other Countries to drop their tariffs on stuff that *is* made in the USA.

They won't be around as long as the fearmongers want you to think.

Yeah, I don't think that's the "woe is me" flex he thinks it is. The full quote:

Here are the numbers: A product we might have manufactured in China for $3.00 last year could now cost $4.62 before we even ship it across the ocean. Add freight, warehousing, fulfillment, and distribution margins, and that once-$25 game quickly becomes a $40 product. That's not a luxury upcharge; it's survival math.

And, as you said, it's a bit presumptuous to just assume that the rest of the world will hold firm in its response instead of just negotiating. It's chaotic now and in the short term for sure for manufacturers and I don't doubt that some will attempt to price gouge consumers permanently convienently forgetting to reverse those increases if and when the tariffs either decrease or go away completely.

Basically, T is trying to tank the market with scary tariffs to drive down the interest rates, people will buy bonds and the Gov. can borrow on a low rate (hopefully close to zero), pay off debt interest and force manufacturing back to the U.S.

That pushes the budget to balance, or close too, then he can eliminate income tax and you will witness the largest economic boom ever.

Who knows if it will work.

I'm just some guy on the internet.

This is not financial advice.

If only we didn't have roughly 20%+ cummulative inflation and price increases on things like food, gas, and housing that will never be rolled back over the past four years reducing our collective buying power then these tariffs might not feel so dire in the short term.

$2.5 TRILLION dollars wiped off wall street overnight, dollar plunging in value.

More 4-D chess genius moves from the same brilliant mind that suggested injecting bleach and bragged about passing a cognitive test that contained such 'hard' questions as identifying an illustration of an elephant?

All we can say for sure...

...gw gonna raise their prices.

 posermcbogus wrote:
$2.5 TRILLION dollars wiped off wall street overnight, dollar plunging in value.

More 4-D genius moves from the same brilliant mind that suggested injecting bleach and bragged about passing a cognitive test that contained such 'hard' questions as identifying an illustration of an elephant?

All we can say for sure...

...gw gonna raise their prices.

- Could eliminate income tax under 150k.

- Mexico deployed 10k troops to stop fentanyl flow.

- Honda, Apple, & others reshoring factories & jobs

- Taiwan Semiconductor building in the U.S., reducing war risk.

I can play this game too, and I don't get my news from people that only point out the downsides, real or not.

I also don't care that Nike lost 10 BILLION in Market Cap today. I care that they have over 450k employees in over 130 factories in Vietnam.

[voice cracking] M-masterful gambit, sir. Tanking the woke stock market is the last thing they expected. Tac-tac-tactical genius of the highest order.

 TalonZahn wrote:

 posermcbogus wrote:
$2.5 TRILLION dollars wiped off wall street overnight, dollar plunging in value.

More 4-D genius moves from the same brilliant mind that suggested injecting bleach and bragged about passing a cognitive test that contained such 'hard' questions as identifying an illustration of an elephant?

All we can say for sure...

...gw gonna raise their prices.

- Could eliminate income tax under 150k.

- Mexico deployed 10k troops to stop fentanyl flow.

- Honda, Apple, & others reshoring factories & jobs

- Taiwan Semiconductor building in the U.S., reducing war risk.

I can play this game too, and I don't get my news from people that only point out the downsides, real or not.

Could? Lmao. 2.5 trillion is real.

Wandering a little off track here, folks, This isn't the place for the wider political discussion... let's stick to the wargaming side of things, please.

 warboss wrote:

Yeah, I don't think that's the "woe is me" flex he thinks it is. The full quote:

Here are the numbers: A product we might have manufactured in China for $3.00 last year could now cost $4.62 before we even ship it across the ocean. Add freight, warehousing, fulfillment, and distribution margins, and that once-$25 game quickly becomes a $40 product. That's not a luxury upcharge; it's survival math.

And, as you said, it's a bit presumptuous to just assume that the rest of the world will hold firm in its response instead of just negotiating. It's chaotic now and in the short term for sure for manufacturers and I don't doubt that some will attempt to price gouge consumers permanently convienently forgetting to reverse those increases if and when the tariffs either decrease or go away completely.

The point he's making isn't that a $1.62 increase justifies a $15 price rise... it's that all of those other things he mentioned become more expensive as well. When your base product gets more expensive, and then shipping it, warehousing it, and getting it out to your customers also all become exponentially more expensive due to the associated costs behind those all going up, then the price of the product has to go up as well. All of those expense increases stack up very quickly.

In b4 the inevitable lock. And my very hot take on all this is that the effects on the prices of wargame materials is probably going to be negligible in the long run, but possibly significant in the short term depending on the country of origin. But as has been pointed out already in this doomed thread, GW is most likely going to raise their prices and then claim it's because of the tariffs. All I know is that I'm in favor of the tariff strategy if only because the mainstream media and a certain political party (who happens to basically own said mainstream media) seem to be hellbent against it. Makes me think it'll end up helping lower the prices of everything, and then we'll all have more money to spend on plastic soldiers! But I'm no expert, just a (possibly naive) optimist.

 TalonZahn wrote:


TLDR on the SJG tears.... it will cost $1.62 more for us to use Chinese slave labor, so we will have to increase the price $15.

I don't know SJG's business model- if their costs are increasing, that would seem to imply that they import their own product into the US and sell it to the end user or to third party vendors from within the US.

If that is indeed the case, their cost increases 54%. They DO have to find a way to account for that... They can decrease their profit (ie. eat some or all of the loss), they can increase their prices for 3rd party resellers, or for end users who buy direct. They're unlikely to pay for all of the increased cost via a single method- so they'll eat SOME of the cost, they'll raise third party pricing by one rate and the end user pricing by another. They also might switch their outsourcing to a country with a lower tariff rate; they may delay development of new products or business expansion; they may lay off some of their American workforce. In any case, a cost increase of 54% is a significant challenge.

 TalonZahn wrote:

These tariffs are just a tactic to get other Countries to drop their tariffs on stuff that *is* made in the USA.

Perhaps. But the issue for these companies is that they have no control over whether or not the country of origin drops their tariffs. Even with these tariffs, the cost of re-sourcing the manufacturing might be higher, which means it's a matter of how long a company can hold out vs. how long it takes one of the governments in question to flinch.

 TalonZahn wrote:

They won't be around as long as the fearmongers want you to think.

Well, here's hoping.

 TalonZahn wrote:
The U.S. accounts for at *least* 25% of Canada's GDP and over 45% of Mexico's. Those 2 combined account for about 1.2% of the U.S. GDP.

Canada's population is just over 10% of the US population. In order for the US to balance it's % of GDP with ours, we would have to make 10 times as much stuff per person as the US AND buy 10 times as much stuff per person as the US. OF COURSE your market is responsible more of our GDP than ours is for you- that's not a rip off or a subsidy my dude... It's grade five math.

 TalonZahn wrote:

The tariffs on the EU have more to do with NATO spending.

Really?

Then why don't they apply to the 5 Nato nations that aren't a part of the EU and why do they apply to the four countries in the EU that aren't in NATO? And why is it a flat rate rather than being different based on how much each of the member countries are spending on defense?

 TalonZahn wrote:

I guess if you're cool propping up half the world and killing production in the U.S. for the last 30+ years, fine by me.

The US ranks 1st in GDP and 7th in GDP per capita. If you feel like the average American doesn't have as much as they should, that's because of the income disparity between the rich, the middle class and the poor, not because of tariffs, trade deficits, foreign spending or any other boogey-men. Your country makes more per person than all but 6 other countries in the entire world but since most of it goes to billionaires and most of what's left over goes to millionaires, it can be easy to feel like your country isn't doing as it actually is.

It isn't "other countries" that are ripping off Americans.

 TalonZahn wrote:

Jim Cramer just said the tariffs won't work, so that's a 100% guarantee they will.

I have no idea who this guy is, but in case you haven't been paying attention, he's not the only one saying that.