BosKonay

Here is the EU entry for the category Commodity information for 9503003000 This tariff is for 2 March 2019  Change date  Check the chapter notes to make sure this code is suitable for your product. Get guidance on this product area: Electric lamps, Toys, games and sports equipment Discuss this chapter in the forums All sections Section XX: Miscellaneous manufactured articles 95 Toys, games and sports requisites; parts and accessories thereof 03 Tricycles, scooters, pedal cars and similar wheeled toys; dolls' carriages; dolls; other toys; reduced-size ('scale') models and similar recreational models, working or not; puzzles of all kinds Electric trains, including tracks, signals and other accessories therefor; reduced-size (scale) model assembly kits https://www.trade-tariff.service.gov.uk/trade-tariff/commodities/9503003000?currency=EUR&day=2&month=3&year=2019

Actually part of the entire war is that the deminimis was removed. So tariffs and duty will be levied on the entire shipment value. Re New Zealand models are not toys but a dedicated category of their own and should not have duty charged (this is of course separate to tariffs) Accurate labeling is key here but some carriers at national level do ignore such things. The important point here is that no one in China cares and no one outside the Us cares as it doesn’t effect them in any way at all. Unless your business is entirely based on exporting to the USA (or importing from China to the USA) (like all the US outline manufacturers for example) then tariffs don’t change anything.

There is no duty on models globally unless NZ are a bit ‘independent

(joking) Says a guy in New Zealand? you can indeed shop in New Zealand dollars and even browse the website in Māori:)

actually the entity doesn’t matter as it’s ultimately owned by the Dublin company. No prices changed at all. All points were transferred. Just for the record and sake of accuracy.

Perhaps we might, if possible, return to the topic at hand? Or at least the broad hobby? As it stands right now if you buy say $400 of models from IRM for delivery to the USA than you will be asked to pay import duties and fees of at least $580 before your models will be released to you. So that $400 loco is now effectively $1000

The blog posts do normally list the euro pricing which if you browse the website from Europe or Ireland, you will see the VAT inclusive price in Europe equally if you browse from the USA you will see the price in US dollars and if you browse from Japan, you will see the website in Japanese with pricing in yen

In reality you’d need massive subsidy and / or the market to accept a €1,000 price point for a locomotive.

Yes unfitted means there is no braking system (like vacuum brakes or air brakes) fitted. So the train would need a brake van.

Marklin went bust in the mid noughties with massive debts and even now struggle to turn a profit on 130m or so of sales (probably more than the entire UK market for the entire hobby) The challenge for our industry is that yes you could build a factory in another location at a cost of many many millions and it would not be ready to start manufacture for at least two years and that’s being optimistic and then you are going to need to hire hundreds of staff who will all have to be trained since all of the skills required are based in China so you end up with a massive capital investment a massive operating cost that you have to carry for many many years while getting a factory up to speed so that you can approach half as good models at probably four times the price in four years time The simple fact of the matter is that unless change happens, all manufacturers bringing models into the USA are at risk and the damage was long long done in moving ALL manufacture east, not just our hobby. Unless Government is willing to massively subsidize investment and operating costs to bring any such work ‘home’ it is simply financially impossible. Chinese factories have spent nearly 50 years building a just in time infrastructure with factories, subcontractors and very high level expertise all in place with a super competitive work force who are actually happy to work hard and are amazingly good at what they do. Would you want to sit in a factory assembling models to ‘factory’ standards for about $2 an hour?

Without getting political, the USA actually uses Chinese money to build -their- army.

A lovely idea in theory but we’ve had to expand the stand size just to barely be able to fit the growing range of accurascale UK outline models and even then have to tightly limit display to in stock or forthcoming only. In simple terms we don’t have the space to dedicate. Obviously IRM is our spiritual home so to speak so we continue promoting and pushing where it makes sense (we won’t have accurascale cabinets at Wexford for example) and we have actually a logjam of irm launches to do now since the ICR and park royal delays.

https://www.accurascale.com/collections/irish-railway-models Obviously we run this community (on a no ads basis) so very keen to here any thoughts on how we can make it simpler to navigate, or promote it better, bearing in mind that the IRM models are featured on the home page, the category has top line billing and we feature new Irish models in the sliders on the home also. It would be akin to us pushing French outline, or Belgian outline to a UK base too..

We’ve made for a range of other companies at this stage, in all scales too but can’t obviously go into specifics.

I hear they were made by a very reputable manufacturer;)