The eu did this some years ago to the US. As a model builder this will be a setback, and most of Europe & Japan have turned off shipping, at least for the time being. China has a pretty big plastic modelkit industry.
Italian here, even for goods at around 50$ we pay 20% taxes + 22% VAT
and we still cannot compete
idiocracy, once in place, will not go back
I have no problems with the tariffs themselves, we've had no real teeth on those for years here.
The implementation? Yeah, this is going to be a "New York Soda Tax" moment - all of those little parcels that consumers buy are going to slow or stop. The government thinks they are going to collects gorillions, but in reality people will simply find alternative methods or go without.
There's also the issues of how to even collect those tariffs from all the little parcel companies that operate here, as well as WTF even are they today?
Our De Minimus was $50 in the 1990s. That's fine, and could be scaled with inflation (would be about $110 today.) O'Bummer raised it to $800 right before leaving office, and he knew that would eventually create a mess for whomever came after him. With as cheap as crap is from China, you could order $800 worth of goods A DAY and stock a small store with it.
(post is archived)