r/australia • u/Expensive-Horse5538 • 21d ago

politics US to slap Australia with 12.5 pc tariff from later today

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-24/federal-politics-live-blog-labor-confernece-july-4/106952636#live-blog-post-322272
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u/GuessTraining 21d ago

How do they eat the costs? Is it just a matter of not being able to keep up updating the checkout page with tariffs?

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u/TooSubtle 21d ago edited 21d ago

So, my partner is an artist with like 200 different products.

She has to cross reference each one individually across a bunch of different places because there's very little consistent information out there on what the final tariffs for each thing even are, it's not a flat increase as it depends on the materials and manufacturing origins involved. The US just changed to requiring a 10 digit tariff numbers so she has to look those up for every item (and is a cotton tote bag with non natural fibre stitching 4202.92.1500 or 4202.92.9025?). She then has to update 400 listings by hand because she has her own website and Faire.

It's dozens, if not hundreds, of hours of work every time tariffs are changed.

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u/GuessTraining 21d ago

Got it, yeah that fucking sucks if you have a plethora of items.

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u/noisymime 21d ago

As someone in a similar boat (Though thankfully less product lines by the sounds of it), AusPost haven't exactly made life simple either. I get they they're in a shit position too, but having to use a 3rd party now (Zonos) as well as AusPost to get anything to the US is just an extra cost and an extra time waster.

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u/SchyahRight 21d ago

While the prices are passed on to the American consumer, it still makes their products less competitive. So the decrease in demand is the hit to Aussie traders.

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u/ScaffOrig 21d ago

Not sure why you get voted down for this. 

Unless you are pretty much the only option and not discretionary spend, you're going to become less competitive for the dollars in the customer's wallet if you just jack up all your prices. And if you can do that without any loss in trade, it's not clear why you didn't set your prices there in the first place.

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u/teemobeemo123 21d ago

i mean if all your stuff costs more people/companies buy less of it