Who Actually Pays the Tariffs?
A common misconception is that foreign countries pay the tariffs imposed by the U.S. government. In reality, when goods arrive at U.S. ports, they are held until the importing company—often a domestic business—pays the required tariff. This means that the financial burden falls directly on U.S. importers, not the exporting foreign entities. And of course, the higher cost of goods means higher retail prices once these products hit shelves.
The Challenge of Domestic Manufacturing
The rationale behind imposing tariffs is to make imported goods more expensive, thereby encouraging companies to manufacture products domestically. However, this is far more difficult than it sounds. In many instances, the infrastructure or expertise to produce certain items simply doesn’t exist in the U.S. Building out these factories could take years, if not decades. Will tariffs that almost everyone agrees will not be permanent be enough of an incentive for businesses to risk spending the billions of dollars required to rebuild our manufacturing?
How Much Does it Cost To Make It In America?
I've tried to produce multiple products in the United States and each time it's failed. The factories simply do not exist here, but the few that do charge substantially more than working with a factory overseas. In my experience, manufacturing costs 8 to 12 times more in the USA than having it produced in another country and shipped in. This means that tariffs need to reach 800% before it would become cheaper to have a product made in America. This of course isn't feasible, as consumers would never buy products for 8X the price, and at those rates, the businesses and products would cease to exist.
Also it's important to remember that, products "made in America" are still currently made with foreign materials using foreign-made machines. Blanket tariffs would hit every business and factory for decades even though they were manufacturing products locally.
My hot sauce brand Oliveum is cooked and bottled in the USA but the bottles themselves are Chinese-made. A few commenters on my video said that I sold out my country by having my hot sauce bottles made in China. They fail to realize that every hot sauce bottle in America is already made in China.
How Much Will Tariffs Affect The Cost of Photography Equipment
Tony Northrup made a great video breaking down the cost increases we are about to see on camera gear based on their country of origin.
Impact on Camera Gear
The photography industry is particularly affected by these tariffs, as many camera manufacturers produce equipment in the countries facing higher duties:
• Canon: Manufactures in Japan (24% tariff) and Taiwan (32% tariff).
• Nikon: Produces in Thailand (36% tariff) and Japan.
• Sony: Operates factories in Thailand and Japan (24% tariff).
• Fujifilm: Manufactures in China (34% tariff) and Japan.
• Olympus (OM System): Primarily produces in Vietnam (46% tariff).
A Deeper Dive Into Trade Deficits, Tariffs, and How They Were Calculated
Ben Shapiro recently came out with a video that goes much deeper into these tariffs, and how they appear to have been calculated based on trade deficits, rather than being "reciprocal."
I would love to be able to easily and affordably manufacture products in the United States. Proponents of these tariffs seem to believe this is right around the corner. I hope they're right.
Join the Fstoppers community for free
-
Post comments and join in the discussions
-
Browse the site ad-free
-
Share your work and get featured in the community
-
Compete in the photo contests for fun and prizes
131 Comments
I know amazon and prime is a favorite market for myself, but it is not really a 'Camera-Store'. Where B&H is actually official.
P.S. That Sony 400-800mm one on Amazon you see is just a guy trying to rip you off for a used one, and probably not even real.
There’s not much any country can do because there is no government interference preventing imports from the US. These tariffs are based on a century-old outdated idea of trade imbalance, something that the global economy cannot undo.
The US will not return to manufacturing clothes, shoes and glass bottles - because no one will work in factories for 10c / day.
And besides we don’t want to regress from the tech economy we have now.
Only idiots making absurd claims about mythical billionaires believe textile and simple manufacturing will return to the US.
Instead, Trump has created an unnecessary self-defeating economic meltdown, and imposed a massive tax on everyone living here.
If you voted for Trump you are an idiot and this was always gonna happen. If you did not vote for Trump you are a wise man and a wise person or a wise woman and my condolences to you. Trump is dangerous and everyone could see what he was going to do months before the election, but people still voted for him. It's staggers me that people could actually vote for him.
Alright, let’s walk through this clearly and calmly, because the panic coming from people like Lee Morris over these tariffs is seriously overblown. Yes, prices might go up a bit. Yes, some camera gear is going to cost more in the short term. But this isn’t the end of the industry. It’s not economic collapse. It’s a temporary, strategic move to fix a decades-long problem. So let’s stop treating it like the sky is falling.
Tariffs aren’t some evil tax designed to punish consumers. They’re a tool. A pressure tactic. They’re being used to push countries that have been taking advantage of us to finally play fair. And guess what? They’re not permanent. They’re designed to apply short-term discomfort to create long-term balance. That’s how negotiation works.
Now, Morris brings up a few fair points about domestic manufacturing taking time to rebuild. He’s right. We’re not going to snap our fingers and open 50 new factories next month. But that doesn’t mean you don’t start. If you want to bring manufacturing back, you have to create the environment where it makes sense to invest here again. Tariffs help make that case.
And let’s not forget, the administration has already issued hundreds of exemptions for key goods. They’re not hitting everything blindly. There’s a strategy here. Energy products, essential chemicals, vaccines—things critical to keeping the economy moving—are getting relief. This is not a blunt instrument. It’s targeted, flexible, and clearly thought through.
Also, let’s be real. Most of the people complaining are the same ones who happily spend $4,000 on the latest camera body every 18 months. If the price jumps by a couple hundred dollars for a little while, that’s not financial ruin. That’s the cost of doing what needs to be done to get our leverage back.
So take a breath. These tariffs are a tool. They’re short-term. They’re part of a bigger strategy. And no, they’re not going to destroy the photography industry. They’re a step toward making sure the next generation doesn’t have to buy every last thing from countries that laugh at us while cashing our checks. That’s worth a little patience.
I find it interesting so many are complaining about the tariff's but I have seen zero about the accuracy of Trump's tariff chart and what others charge the USA - Does that imply the chart showing what other countries, including allies, charge us?
Tonights NY Times (04/08/2025), the online version, in a large point size, clearly states "U.S. Implements Punishing Tariff's on Trade Partners" - Because I no longer subscribe to the Times I am unable to see if they get into a discussion of what our allies, or others tariff us - Trump's chart, assuming it's accurate, shows tariff rates to us at substantially higher rates - Are any media outlets discussing this?
And then of course you have MSNBC who seems to be totally incapable of presenting a balanced story...
Add that to politicians who act like kindergartners - We've managed to turn into a real mess - I do hope this fiasco begins to go Trump's way or we as a country will experience a lot of pain.
As an American citizen I think we have the right to demand politicians act like adults, to be able to sit down together and hammer out solutions together - In addition, I think we have the right to demand balanced stories out of the media - Put your opinions on the Op-Ed page where they belong.
By the way... does anyone in Washington have a realistic plan to bring down the national debt or do we allow it to become ever larger?
No, it's got nothing to do with actual tariffs charged by other countries.
The calculation's based on the balance of trade between the US and the other country. Hence why Lesotho was hit with 50% tariffs. They're a major diamond producer, but a very poor country ($2bn USD GDP). That means high value exports to the US, and not much in the way of US exports to Lesotho.
There's a piece on the calculation here, most coverage I've seem from this side of the pond and other non-American sources led on the inaccuracy: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/03/trumps-idiotic-and-flaw…
Really, The Guardian as arbiter of truth? You must be joking.
The calculations are based on direct import tariffs as well as government imposed costs and barriers that would increase the cost of access to the foreign market relative to members of their trade bloc.
https://hts.usitc.gov/reststop/file?release=currentRelease&filename=fin…
The chart showed on the press conference was an oversimplified one to convey the overall concept, but the actual chart is almost 4500 pages long, since it is not a blanket percentage. For example, you will see items with 0% tariffs because the target nation has a 0% for the specific item and a reciprocal or even half reciprocal policy will still mean 0.
This is an area with many emotional hit pieces based on attacking the press conference and pretending that no further thought went into anything, rather than looking at what the government officially implemented.
Aside from that there are nations where some blanket offsets were applied, and that is because for some there are trade barriers where a cost cannot be calculated since a legal cost would be infinity. For example, nations that impose a strict policy of to if you are not part of their trade bloc and you want your product on store shelves in their country, then you need to open a factory there, then the items the factory makes can be sold to the general population in retail stores. In those cases, that are effectively taking the target nation's tariff schedule,and adding an offset that represents what they believe is the proportion of the trade deficit those policies impose.
The goal is not to have equal trade since that is impossible, instead it is to allow for a competitive marketplace.
With that in mind there is one area that can be seen as overall blanket, which is the uncategorized CET. Basically it is the US adopting the same tariff strategy that every other country has been using, which is where they implement a high universal tariff strategy, and then selectively exempt nations from it when they form a trade bloc.
For decades, the US was never able to get deals as good as the various trade blocs.
Before the the more recent tribalism, there was large bipartisan agreement on these issues.
"The calculations are based on direct import tariffs as well as government imposed costs and barriers that would increase the cost of access to the foreign market relative to members of their trade bloc."
No, they're not. The 4,420 page PDF you've linked to is the tariff schedule. Those are large datasets covering all commodity codes.
The information on the calculation is here, it's 1 page of A4 if you want to print it: https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations
To quote the opening paragraph there: "Reciprocal tariffs are calculated as the tariff rate necessary to balance bilateral trade deficits between the U.S. and each of our trading partners. This calculation assumes that persistent trade deficits are due to a combination of tariff and non-tariff factors that prevent trade from balancing."
It's half of the trade deficit with the US divided by exports. You'll note the lack of mention of direct import tariffs, government imposed costs or barriers there.
If you want, please feel free to point out what the direct import tariffs, government imposed costs and barriers are that justify a 50% additional tariff on Lesotho, or a 41% additional tariff on the Falkland Islands? Lesotho's tariffs on the US are actually around 10%, so there must be some easy other factors for you to point out.
The latter's one where we can really pull it apart, because the Falklands are a tiny community of under 4,000 people (fewer than the pages in the tariff schedule you linked), with a fishing business that's over half the £280m GDP.
Please, have a look at their government's website and see if you can figure out what government imposed costs and barriers increase the cost of access to this huge market: https://falklands.gov.fk/
I was going to suggest walking the 10 or 15 streets of the capital on Street View, to see if that helped, but Google don't appear to have taken the time to ship a camera out there. See if you can spot anything on satellite: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@-51.6951617,-57.8676956,1804m/data=!3m1!…
The only person who I see acting like a kindergartener is President Trump. Okay, maybe a first grader:
“When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I'm basically the same. The temperament is not that different.” -Donald J. Trump
Source: The Truth About Trump by Michael D'antonio (https://a.co/d/gzb2Dq3)
Sitting here in Europe, just wondering on what the effects of all this will be. What we are seeing here from Europe is a US Republican administration that appears to have just applied the largest tax increases to its own citizens in US history, in an attempt to address the trade deficit. Medicine it may be, but its toxic medicine. The photography market in particular will be hard hit, as any complex device has components sourced from across the globe. I also wonder what the knock effects will be here in Europe, we may see product dumping and so price decreases... if that happens Europe may become the travel destination of choice for US citizens looking for cheap(er) gear.
The cost of everything skyrocketed 20% under the previous administration thanks to reckless spending and waste. That is the real tax on Americans.
Be patient- That tech that the US off-shored decades ago will soon be produced in the countries that are making deals. Apple just moved their production of iPhones to India to avoid the PRC tariffs.
Virtually NONE of it will come to the US. Tariffs, aka "taxes," are economy killers. Always have been.
That’s not true in context. Apple has been diversifying its production base for years.
There’s also no real deals to be made. The world saw Trump rip up his own trade agreement with Canada and Mexico and chaotically slap them with tariffs then change his mind, then slap on different ones.
An agreement with Trump is about as resilient as toilet paper. Whether he respects it on any given day depends on what side of the bed he wakes up on that morning.
Not to mention that his stated goal is to bring manufacturing back to ‘Murica! not move it from China to India.
Thing is: China’s pool of skilled workers and professionals and manufacturing capabilities and logistics far outstrip anything one can find anywhere else. Apple’s Chinese competitors are producing their products in fully autonomous dark factories that operate without human intervention and crank out a phone every 3 seconds.
Here’s a direct quote from Apple CEO Tim Cook:
“The popular conception is that companies come to China because of low labour costs. I'm not sure what part of China they go to, but the truth is China stopped being the low labour costs country many years ago,”
“The reason is because of the skill, the quantity of skill in one location, and the type of skill it is. The tooling skill is very deep here. In the US, you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I'm not sure we could fill the room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields. Vocational expertise is very very deep here.”
comment deleted... this stuff is too heated
This whole tariffs plan is insane and damaging. So Europe (25%) will ship to UK (10%) and stall it there 3 days, then what?
The only thing I'll add - because no one knows how it will all turn out - is:
Big picture.
For sure The Donald doesn't.
Apparently the "big picture" looks like TrumPutin is manipulating the markets for personal gain based on his stock sales and purchases.
Two Republicans and two Democrats co-sponsored a bill in the House of Representatives yesterday to curtail Trump's authority to impose tariffs. The US Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate foreign commerce and impose tariffs in Article I, Section 8. Given previous Congressional legislation which muddied the waters of extending that authority to the executive branch, it's time for Congress to reassert its authority.
The constitution means nothing to the republicans.
The reality is in these countries. The dollars per hour figure is roughly four dollars to 5 dollars an hour for a worker and maybe that is just ridiculously too cheap but if we employ someone in Australia or the United States or the UK it would be $30 an hour plus holiday insurance superannuation factory insurance and a whole bunch of other costs. It is just not possible to manufacture cameras and so forth for the mass market. Now people will argue that you can buy German made Leica cameras .... but they are so expensive
Tariffs...seriously? Millions of people either refused to vote, or knowingly voted for a felon and an adjudicated rapist—Millions *chose* to be victimized by a bankrupt, bigoted, anti-Semitic, bleach-injecting, twice-impeached, gameshow host misogynist. If you think American Tyranny will stop with wildly incompetent tariffs, you are deeply misinformed: Stand up for freedom today or lose it tomorrow: Make a passionate commitment to freedom, democracy and a valid Constitution before it's too late. Peace & Gratitude.
If the tariffs tank the US economy, then the voters will make decisions in the midterm that will quite simply prevent trump from continuing on the same path. I think he finally realised this yesterday - and hence the 90 day pause (perhaps). "Its the economy stupid" always comes to the top when voting no matter who is running the show.
90 days pause.. How stupid is this whole gang of his? What happens after 90 days? A first year economics student knows the basic rule that stability and trust are essential for investors.
He's manipulating the markets for personal gain, obviously. But there's nobody in DC to keep an eye on him since his admin is full of sycophants.
Scott, if someone tried to cram every overused talking point from the last ten years into one breathless rant, they’d come pretty close to what you just posted. You’re not making an argument. You’re reciting a litany of political slurs, hoping the sheer noise will drown out the fact that there’s no substance behind it.
Let’s get this straight. Tariffs are a policy tool. You can argue for or against them. But calling them tyranny while you praise an administration that censored speech, mandated medical compliance, and weaponized federal agencies against its political opponents is a masterclass in projection. Rebuilding domestic industry and protecting American workers from decades of one-sided trade deals is not authoritarianism. It’s leadership.
As for the rest of your screed—felon, rapist, bigot, anti-Semite, misogynist, bleach, bankrupt, gameshow host—none of that is an argument. It’s just you screaming into the wind. Trump was never charged with injecting bleach into anything. He was never criminally convicted of rape. He is not anti-Semitic. He has Jewish grandchildren, a record of historic support for Israel, and delivered actual peace agreements in the Middle East while the last guy was busy giving Iran pallets of cash.
The impeachments? Both politically driven. Both failed. And if you want to talk about bankruptcies, maybe understand what Chapter 11 is before you pretend it proves anything about a man who built a global brand and employed thousands.
What you’re doing here isn’t standing up for democracy. It’s punching at shadows and pretending it’s moral courage. Real freedom doesn’t mean everyone agrees with you. It means they get to disagree, and vote for someone who doesn’t hate their values, their history, or their country.
You don’t have to like Trump. But if you want to be taken seriously, start acting like a grown man instead of an algorithm fed a steady diet of cable news hysteria.
Lee, did you hear your President yesterday ... it's a good time to buy ... Sony FE 400-800mm f/6.3-8 G OSS Lens.!
You’re correct that, in the first instance, it’s the importer who pays the tariff. It does not necessarily follow, however, that 100% of the tariff is passed on to the consumer. The ultimate INCIDENCE of the tariff largely depends on two factors: (1) the price elasticity of demand for the product and (2) the wage elasticity of supply of the importer’s work force.
For example, suppose a 20% tariff is imposed on Haas avocados imported from Mexico. If the importer tries to pass the tariff on to the buyers of his avocados, buyers will simply switch to domestically produced avocados. The importer will then face a choice: absorb the costs himself and/or reduce costs in other areas, such as labor. If the labor market is very competitive, the owner may find that attempting to cut labor costs results in workers leaving. The importer could also reduce costs by substituting capital (machinery) for labor.
The bottom line is that, while importers pay tariffs in the first instance, the question of who ultimately bears their cost is quite complex and varies from one product to another.
What you say is true, the costs of tariffs are watered down as the item moves through the supply chain to the consumer. But eventually the consumer ends up paying more, because each part of that supply chain can only bare so much added cost. And lets not forget that tariffs run in the reverse direction too, because manufacturers end up having to source more expensive components when the parts they need are affected. Consumers will likely never see the full cost of tariffs added to the things they buy, but they will see prices go up.