I’ve started to get some intel from my manufacturers and the new taxes known as tariffs are going to boost prices on all kayaking related products. +$200 on a $4k composite kayak and to add a bit more sting to that is added state sales tax added onto it.
USA mfg. isn’t immune as it affects the supply chain they work from just as well.
The final price hikes could be more but some of the impact is being spread to the manufacturers and businesses before it gets to the consumer. Other costs (like inbound shipping on kayaks) that were part of doing business are now going to be passed along to the consumer in light of this effort to minimize the impact.
If you were thinking of a new bit of kit or a boat reprioritize that gift list and do it before there’s no more 2024.
Sorry for the depressing news but that’s what the crystal ball is forecasting. I’ll try to reboot it.
Do you think it’s better to keep importing manufactured goods rather than relyingbon US manufacturers. Unfortunate news for kayakers!
One sution is to stop buying kayaks until the tariffs go away or buy used. Then we can buy foreign again and let US workers get jobs selling lattes at Starbucks.
My neighbor had a part-time job cutting grass with a landscape company, until the market was inundated by the wave of immigrants. Fortunately, the price for contracts to cut lawns dropped slightly. When I was a kid, we coukd make spending money cutting lawns for 5 bucks. Not enough kids today to do the job? I’d cut my yard for 50 bucks, but my wife makes me do it for nothing. So if I want to kayak, “I” have to pay somebody 50 bucks to go kayaking.
It’s not that simple, as I type on an iPhone which while designed in California certainly isn’t made there.
Foreign brands are foreign brands (BMW, Mercedes, etc.). As to USA mfg., if the consumer market would bear the price of USA labor prices this would be a non issue but lower overhead rules the day.
Your example of Services is an entirely different beast and I’m not how that will impact foreign based services to which I’m not going to provide examples of so as to keep Murphy in the dark.
Walk into a Walmart, look about and extrapolate how the price increase ripples are going to impact. That’ll be something. You know they won’t absorb the increases out of altruism.
Absutely. Americans arent willing to work for slave wages. Maybe with the dock workers rejecting 60% pay increases and holding out for 75% will increase costs enough to make US manufacturing more reasonable. I guess the bottom line is buy fireign and look out for #1. Buy internet and wonder why local shops go out of business. Economics can be complicated. The funny thing about our elected officials is how they think the answer to the escalating housing costs is to give new buyers $25k for a down payment. The answer to the high cost of education is make it free, so the 20% who go to college can do it for free, while the people who don’t go to college can share that burden. My kids weren’t so smart. My four clueless kids actually worked and paid their way through college. I feel bad for telling them . . . That’s the right thing to do.
Sorry, I went off track and forgot that this is about keeping the cost of kayaks affordable.
The threat of tariffs last go round is what prompted me to finally get off my butt and buy my Epic. Aussie company but mfg in China. Price went up $400 shortly after.
I am glad I ordered and paid for my Rebel TOC in October. I get it in March.
I’d love to buy 2 more Rebel kayaks in the coming 1-2 years but at a 25 or 50 percent Tariff, that won’t happen.
Overall I like what the new policy is and I understand that it’s moving toward the elimination of Income tax, so for Americans to save 1/3 of their pay every year I am VERY willing to see such policy, But nothing in politics are a total solution. It’s always a trade-off the the best policies are the ones that giv e the most value in that trade.
If an average American household had an 80,000 figure from which they only get to keep 53,000, and after such tariffs are implemented over a few years, they actually bringing home the full 80,000 (from which I understand other taxes are taken, but those are taken anyway on top of the income tax anyway) I will concede that me looking at paying 1/4 more for a kayak or simply not buying it at all is well worth the trade.
But that said, If I had an extra $3700 to spend now, (I don’t!) I’d buy a Jara or a Husky before the end of January.
You display a common, and troubling, misunderstanding of tariffs. They have NEVER provided working Americans with any level of prosperity or even basic financial security. In fact, reliance on tariffs in prior centuries were part of what undermined the ability of the poor to move into the middle class and the middle class to be more upwardly mobile. A large contributing factor to the Great Depression was the decades of tariffs that the Feds had relied upon to prop up their budgets.
The notion that they will replace the income tax for the average American is ludicrous. It’s a shell game. Even if the incoming administration reduced payroll taxes on us peons, it would be microscopic and a pittance compared to the huge escalations in the price of daily commodities like food, fuel, clothing, housing goods and (yes) recreational toys. Only the top 1% of the wealthiest Americans benefited from the tax cuts of the prior administration, which filled the bank accounts of the upper class while adding several TRILLION to the Federal deficit (and the incomers have announced those cuts will be extended past their expiration date, all for the benefit of those who could never live long enough to spend their vast wealth). All the plans of the incoming regime are aimed at improving the bottom lines of those already multimillionaires and billionaires, while making it harder for anyone else to prosper.
We have been rebuilding US manufacturing the RIGHT way for the past 3 1/2 years, by offering Federal supports and incentives across multiple aspects of the economy, creating over 16 million jobs and hundreds of thousands of new start ups. That’s about to end with the billionaires taking the reins. It’s to their collective benefits for working people to become MORE economically stressed and desperate by eliminating the competition that controls price gouging – the starving will work for crumbs, after all.
This isn’t just me ranting, every respected economist has made the same observations and issued the same warnings. And considering how deeply enmeshed all of our production relies on international trade networks for both materials and technology, we are on a worse path with this stupid idea of tariffs than we were in the 1920’s
Jacqueline is offering a very good deal right now that may be of interest to American paddlers from the Great Lakes area and all the way across the northern USA all the way to Seattle Washington. She is going to drop onto US highway 94 and then US 90 going across the north of the USA in March with a good load of kayaks on her truck and anyone that would like a Rebel Kayak can get free (or at lease very cheap) delivery if you pay in this month for delivery in March. I am meeting her in Laurel Montana. but she will meet anyone on that route and deliver the kayak for nothing, if you meet her on her time schedule.
I offered to transport 2 kayaks for friends from Laurel to mid Wyoming because I’ll be going anyway, so paddlers from Colorado, Utah and parts of Idaho can coordinate with me and I’d be happy to bring your kayak closer to you for free, but I’d need such paddlers to be able to get to Shoshoni Wyoming or Riverton Wyoming to take advantage of that offer. But driving to the middle of Wyoming may be a lot less mileage then driving to Montana or N Dakota for some.
Because I’ll be burning the same amount of gas bringing back 1 as I would 2 or 3, I’d volunteer to pick up a kayak for anyone who it would be helpful to – and bring it south at least as far as Shoshoni or Riverton Wyoming. I can haul up to 3 on my rack per trip.
She has the following to sell (as of our last communication)
3 Najas
4 Ilagas (One is bottle green like a dark greek jeep renegade, one is black with purple coaming, one is Dark grey and blue with a white hull, and one is black with turquoise coaming)
1 TOC (Grey and Mellon Yellow - like a mild orange)
1 Illka
2 Huskys
1 Gnarly Dog (Grey with red seams and coaming)
1 Jara (Grey and cobalt blue - it’s a dark blue)
1 Raider (Aquarius) (white and light blue)
1 Qaa (kids Greenland kayak)
If anyone reading this wants a new Rebel kayak, I’d heartily recommend buying before the end of December, and if Jacqueline’s trip plan will work for you, (or if I am able to help get the kayak closer to you, let me know )
She has been VERY helpful to me and took a lot of time answering my questions and making recommendations. She was just a “top notch” lady to work with so far.
If financial blessings come, I hope to buy 2 more rebels from her in my future. (I hope to anyway… )
I warned everybody to buy groceries and anyyhing they needed before January 2020. Ignorance is bliss, but at least you know when to buy a kayak. Just proves you’re tined to important things in life than ignorant old rube me. Get ready for hard times, buy another dozen boats now. As always, you guys are on the cutting edge of EVERY topic.
How would tariffs eliminate the income tax? The people and companies importing goods pay the tariff, not the foreign companies selling the goods. And the importers then pass the cost on to the end purchaser. Even many goods that are produced mainly in the US use many foreign components. If foreign countries retaliate and start a trade was, US products become less ,valuable to importers. This would likely result in a fall in exports, increased unemployment, further increased inflation, and increase the risk of recession.
The US has been running huge trade deficits for years and it’s only accelerating. The income tax is the major income source that funds the government. Unfunded tax cuts have made the deficit far worse. Magical thinking that tax cuts will pay for themselves has never worked.
Interest on the national debt, now at about $35.46 trillion is soon going to cut into popular social programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, child care, etc. It is the middle class and below who will be the most affected as they cannot afford armies of accountants and lawyers who can game the system with elaborate tax avoidance schemes.
Rstevens15,
All good questions and there are accurate answers to them, but it’s a study in law and in history and probably not suitable for a kayaking forum.
I have over 30 years of study and research in this field and have been called on as an advisor in Nevada, Idaho and in Wyoming as a consultant several times in the past by representatives and by 2 senators. As with most things of this nature the media and the government is very good at getting people to ask the wrong questions and address the symptoms of a problem but never the root of that problem.
If you are truly interested, PM me and we can correspond privately. Know this: The answers are easy to understand, but not short and not completely simple. It may be that we never get rid of income tax, but not for the reasons you’ll be told. Just as with any level of organized crime outside government, once a line of money is established the legality and righteousness of such a line is always viewed with secondary importance because the money is used to shore up whatever functions it’s used for, so to destroy or divert such a line of money is ALWAYS going to be met with all resistance legal and illegal.
I’ll PM you a very short overview to what is being proposed.
I am not convinced it will work, but I am certain it’s worth trying.
About the video; Yup, all that is true (or almost all.) But it’s also about 1/3 of the issue.
The media / the socialists is always presenting either outright lies or parts of the truth.
And promoting a 2 party system (found no where in our constitution) is how they maintain their influence and control.
If the citizens of the USA (or any nation for that matter) ever figure out who pulls the strings on the 2 party system (Hint, it’s international bankers and nearly all of them are NOT US Citizens) the whole façade would collapse in a week.
Here is a (VERY) basic overview of taxes in the history of the USA. And even this is only about 5% of the issues, but truth is always simply. Lies are what’s complex. Complexity grows out of history and when it gets complex enough for the liars to use it as a cover, you can bet they will. It’s been that way for 4400 years of recorded world history.
Are there 2 “parties”? Yes. But they are not tied to the Constitution for the united States.
Good and Evil.
Truth. and Lies.
God and Satan.
