I’m pretty sure it will – it’s not tariffs on US-designed goods, but Chinese manufactured.

The idea of tariffs is to dissuade people from sourcing from one country, and to encourage manufacturing/production in another; it’d be a pretty weak political tool if there were caveats, such as “well, it was designed ten years ago by a company in a different country, so should be exempt”.

For over a decade we’ve been on the brink of a “cottage-industry” style revolution – with people and companies having access to the machinery and equipment to produce much closer to source (3d printers, laser cutters, resin printers etc). It never quite arrived, because it’s the relatively high labour costs that has made it cheaper to still have products manufactured on the other side of the world then shipped to the final destination (despite the environmental impact).

Many people will simply look to alternative “developing” nations for manufacturing; forward thinking companies – irrespective of tariffs – with a 5-10 year plan should be looking ahead to future possible tariffs designed to offset the environmental cost of doing global business.

Personally, I’d like to see more people embracing the digital-as-a-product idea that DriveThruRPG has done so well for many years – buy the IP and the right to produce the product closer to the end user (it could be a local company, if the end-user doesn’t have the facilities to produce final goods themselves).

Tariffs are a blunt instrument with lots of unintended consequences. They are harmful in that the end user price can only go up. Very often they simply force business to change their supply chain; it’d be great if they might actually change the way we do business….