I just saw Trump is doing a bunch of tariffs againist China, without getting political, how is this going to affect GTG, especially with a lot of stuff about to ship from China?
The list of proposed goods is here: https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/files/Press/Releases/301FRN.pdf
Other than the known steel and aluminum imposed on almost everyone, it's mostly medical, technology, and machinery, and oddly vulcanized rubber. No paper products. In fact, it makes the decision to print overseas even better, since a lot of the machinery and tools needed for printing and paper manufacturing are on the list.
Currently it doesn't directly affect the board game industry. However, if paper goods are ever affected, expect it to be quite bad in terms of cost; in the past few years, board game prices have jumped up notably while margins have generally shrunk due to both an increase in the cost of paper in China and increased competition. I'd anticipate that the majority of any tarriff on paper will be passed on directly to the consumer in most cases if one is implemented.
Regardless of whether this happens, I would not anticipate any serious move toward US based board game manufacturing. The reason is that the tooling for high quality boxes, boards, and greyboard punching simply does not exist here. Someone could invest the millions necessary to make it happen, but that is unlikely; by far the biggest consumer of high end paper packaging is the electronics industry, which is largely set up to purchase packaging from East Asia. The entire hobby board game industry essentially piggy-backs on the excess capacity of factories whose primary customers are Apple, Samsung, etc. Until their supply chain changes, I'd expect hobby board game manufacturing to be largely locked in to East Asia (and to a lesser extent Eastern Europe for historical reasons).
Ah, that's a neat symbiosis. It's kinda the same way we get cheaper than they should be solar panels because of the piggyback of one back of the already massive silicone chip industry.
Thanks for being upfront about this Paul.
Yeah, that’s an interesting emergent behavior.
So apparently the new set of tariffs Canada is imposing on imports from the US include card games (at 10%). I’m wondering of this will affect GtG’s distribution model?
To be specific, the tariff is actually on "playing cards", and is primarily intended to put a 10-cent charge on a standard deck of playing cards since it's intended to hit a major supplier of playing cards to casinos that's based in Kentucky, but is also going to hit stuff like Magic: the Gathering packs.
So whether it will hit Sentinels is a good question, since the game is generally sold packaged as a board game, not as playing/trading cards. If they're sticking to the "charge per deck/pack" model as the criteria, it could be that only the mini-expansions would be hit, or it could just not count entirely.
Basically it really hinges on whether any or all of Sentinels' logistics are viewed as similar to the "per deck/pack" games or viewed as a board game.
P.S. I'm usually not the type to be pedantic/engage in semantics, but in politics and legal matters exact wording is important/relevant. So the fact that it's specifically "playing cards" versus "card games" may potentially be relevant.
The most important relevant wording is that the tariffs apply to products manufactured in the USA. GTG does not manufacture any cards in the USA.
Even better for our purposes. Thanks for the clarification, MigrantP.
Ah, the articles I read misreported the facts, then. Serves me right for not checking the source. Thanks.
I was going to pop in and clarify, but MigrantP did it for me :)
But is it the first time ANY target deals damage to the Wraith per turn, or the first time PER TARGET that a target deals damage to the Wraith per turn? 
…that is just to say, oh, I think you’re at home with a bunch of people who just have to be pedants about wording sometimes, even if it’s not legalistic wording!
Heh! Fair enough, I suppose.
Mainly I know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of someone(s) being That Guy regards wording where it's like "Oh FFS, you know darn well what I meant", so I generally try to avoid doing to other people whatever I dislike having done to me.
Just in this case I felt the distinction might actually be important, so I wanted to make a sort of pre-emptive apology, "I am not doing this just to be a jerk and argue with you, I know what you meant, but…"
And then MigrantP gave us all the ur-correction anyway. XD
For the record, I did look it up. It certainly doesn't apply to >G unless it ever decided to print in the U.S. (which is unlikely). However, it is a ten per cent tax (not a ten cent tax) on "playing cards," which is not well-defined.
I do a fair amount of international shipping for my own job. Stuff like that is often decided by whatever customs agent handles it. It would be entirely possible for two identical shipments to be taxed differently depending on how they read the rules. Canada is probably better at it than some other countries (some of them handle customs differently every single time I send them something).
This is a pretty old thread, but still seems a reasonable place to continue talking about tariffs.
Apparently, the 25% tariff on board games from China was proposed to start as of July 1st, but that round of tariffs has been avoided, at least for now. I'm not 100% sure I've gotten the details correct, so if someone knows better, please correct me.
You seem to have gotten it: https://io9.gizmodo.com/trump-suspends-tariffs-on-board-games-and-toys-from-chi-1836019816
That seems to be the situation currently. I'll let you know if I have any crazy tarriff charges later this month when Homebrewers and Medium arrive :P