Originally Posted By krautrock
Brandon, can you explain how the tariffs impact your stuff?

There was a thread recently about this and people seem to think it works like this.
There is X amount of cost of metals in a crankshaft, therefore the tariff increase is X times 25% (starting Jan 2019). Is that how it works?
or will it be your full cost of the crankshaft times 25% ???

Thanks!!


It's on the full cost of the items. However, we have been dealing with huge increases in all of our USA made items over the last year or so also, since the tariffs on steel and aluminum came out. About 50% of the parts we offer on our web store are made in the USA.

When the metal tariffs came out, there was a mad run on all the stock left at the raw material houses, since everyone knew huge increases were coming. Many sizes of steel you couldn't even get, and others saw increases of 50% or more if you were even able to buy them. So, many of our US made parts have had huge increases as well. We've offset some of these price increases by trying to order as much quantity as possible, but even this has hardly helped.

US made parts (even though they are made in the US) are almost always made with imported steel, because steel that is actually still made in US foundries is much more expensive. Generally that is reserved for government and military projects that specify the steel used must be of US origin and also where cost is a secondary consideration. So again, the tariffs did not push anyone into "switching" to US made products, they just diverted huge additional amounts of money from individuals and private industry to the government.