25% Increase of Tariffs on Chinese Lasers?

[Scott Shepherd]

Duty is calculated on the declared value + shipping, I believe. The importer pays the tariff, not the exporter. With the tariffs increased to 25% in addition to retaliatory Chinese tariffs, it's likely a substantial increase to what you describe as an already steep cost. I don't know that I would agree that anyone is getting off easy.

Has anyone noticed increased prices for engraving supplies from awards/engraving suppliers? Most, if not all of those are imported from China as well.

There is no declared value in sending an item back to be serviced under warranty. But even at that, they were charging us a 40% tax to get product into China from the USA. That's steeper than the 25% that's being added onto orders from China now. So 25% to get things here, 40% to get things into their country.

I was selling anything into their country. I was having an item that I already paid duties on repaired. Had I put a value of zero on the package, then, if lost, I would have gotten zero from the insurance.

[Trey Tull]

There is no declared value in sending an item back to be serviced under warranty. But even at that, they were charging us a 40% tax to get product into China from the USA. That's steeper than the 25% that's being added onto orders from China now. So 25% to get things here, 40% to get things into their country.

I was selling anything into their country. I was having an item that I already paid duties on repaired. Had I put a value of zero on the package, then, if lost, I would have gotten zero from the insurance.

So the tariff is based on the declared value plus shipping? Why is shipping included in this? If this is the case, what are shipping costs, roughly, for a 30w fiber?

[John Noell]

Here in Fiji, we pay duty (5-32%) and VAT (9%, figured on top of the duty) on the "value plus shipping". (We supposedly only pay duty and VAT on 75% of the shipping if it is invoiced separately, which is rare anyway.) When Epilog sent me a bad tube (via FedEx of course), which they replaced for free I had to pay duty and VAT on it (plus shipping) twice.

[Matt McCoy]

There is no declared value in sending an item back to be serviced under warranty. But even at that, they were charging us a 40% tax to get product into China from the USA. That's steeper than the 25% that's being added onto orders from China now. So 25% to get things here, 40% to get things into their country.

I was selling anything into their country. I was having an item that I already paid duties on repaired. Had I put a value of zero on the package, then, if lost, I would have gotten zero from the insurance.

The carrier will require a declared value for the waybill, which you claimed $2K. The importer (i.e., manufacturer) typically pays the duty imposed by Customs, however it sounds like they expected you to pay it. Declared value, shipping, and any VAT are combined to calculate the tax, so you it wouldn't be a 40% Chinese tariff, it would be less. There is a U.S. CBP form that has to be attached and returned with the repaired part, where you would only be taxed on the cost of the service when bringing it back into the U.S.

What China imposes on imported goods is mostly irrelevant, unless you are an exporter. However, U.S. importers of most Chinese goods are now being taxed at 25% and that is passed on to the end user.

[Floyd Siegal]

I received 2 20W laser systems and 1 60W system on Monday from our manufacturer in China. Still no tariff! I've seen these laser come in as 8456.11.9000 and 8467.29.0090 (and one other I can't recall) of the tariff schedule.
I have more machines coming so I'll post something if anything changes.

[Ross Moshinsky]

1. Incentivize American production. If a Chinese product costs $20 and it costs $3 to ship it and then there is a 25% tax on it of $5, the idea is that the US could potentially produce that item for close to the $28 mark. I'm sure in some industries this may be the case, but it's very questionable how widely this can be applied. Generally speaking, although Americans claim they want mfg jobs back, mfg jobs have been largely employed by 1st generation Americans or immigrants. People seem to want to go back to the 70's where you got a mfg job with a pension and could retire at 55 and that simply isn't happening.

2. Attached to part 2, pull back from buying as much Chinese goods which forces China to renegotiate trade agreements. For me, this is relatively counter intuitive. China has no real incentive to do anything about this because if it makes more sense to produce in the US, we'll do it. Most of the demands of China are going to increase their goods cost which just benefits the potential idea of US going back to an industrial nation. I imagine China will be willing to make some concessions, but ultimately they know they have a ton of leverage and they know the cost of rebuilding the infrastructure to get back into mfg. They've spent several billion dollars building their infrastructure up over the last 30 years.

3. China starts improving their products again. China has become more consistent and established with the mfg process but a lot of the stuff we get from China is still considered inferior. Look at a CO2 laser. A Chinese machine simply isn't as good as a Western one on most levels, except for price. So as the gap in price shrinks, the incentive to buy Chinese shrinks. So what China will be theoretically forced to do is improve their machines. Simply building the machine to engrave at 50ipm vs 20imp would close the performance gap pretty significantly. This will be very market dependent. Some markets China knows that they're filling in the low end spectrum and it's very hard to make headway in the other sectors.

Overall, I don't expect this to go anywhere in the near future. It's a hidden tax. It will help make up for the tax plan passed not so long ago.

[John Lifer]

I think it will be relatively short term, but will run into next year for sure. I think that it will soon be felt elsewhere, Steel imports are being hit hard. Price increases have already been announced by JDS on sheet goods, and I'd bet the SS items will soon go up. I'll not go further as it goes to political for this forum.