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Comment by mystraline | Hacker News Reader

Used cars are ALSO exempt.

And, all used goods bought at secondhand stores are tariff-exempt as well. And so is FB marketplace, Craigslist, and others.

My protest is meager, but effective for us - we just will buy used and use 'Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle' where we can. EnEnough of us doing that will slow and hamper the economy (read: rich peoples' money).

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Used cars respond to market forces too.

If new cars become much more expensive, used cars will become much more expensive. This isn't even a theoretical idea. The exact thing happend in 2020-2021 when you couldn't buy a new car.

This is what many don't understand about tariffs in general: you put tariffs on foreign goods and anything exempt will simply raise their prices to match.

That suggests an ecosystem may appear around making new goods "used" enough to meet some legal definition.

I think the meaning was not "You can import used cars without tariffs", but "If you buy used cars already in the country, you don't pay the new tariff, so just don't buy new cars."

If you're importing it it doesn't matter it's condition other than it's worth less so the tariff would be less. What they mean is if you buy goods that are already here there's no tariff, but they will also go up in price too as the new item goes up.

Isn't that actually what they've been doing in Cuba since the revolution? I'm sure those old cars should have been retired by now and replaced with cheap Chinese imports, but for a few decades, they were refurbishing American-made cars continuously.

The parent comment was a confusing statement. They were saying that buying a used car or goods from a second-hand store does not go through the tariff process because the produce is already here.

There was a loophole in the past where you could take delivery of a car in a foreign country, drive it for a while, and then go through the process of importing it as if you were moving back to the United States. I don't know if the new tariffs honor that loophole or not.

So get the car delivered in Europe. Go on a driving holiday and then ship to the USA.

Are you saying if I import a used car, I don't have to pay tariffs? Factory delivery programs would become a lot more popular.

Or are you just saying that if I buy a car that's already in the US and has already had any import tariffs due at time of import paid, I won't have to pay them again? That's a lot less interesting.

Yes. Volvo has had a program for decades where they fly you to Sweden where drive a vehicle around long enough for it to be "used", buy it then they ship it over to the US to avoid US new car import tariffs.

Very surprised to learn that this is real https://www.volvocars.com/us/l/osd-tourist/

Pretty cool. Lots more info on reddit threads.

Audi, BMW and Mercedes did this as well until a few years ago.

https://www.capitalone.com/cars/learn/finding-the-right-car/...

looks like you have to pay VAT?

VAT is only levied if it doesn't get exported within a certain amount of time (6 months from the scheduled delivery date).

I knew someone who tooled around Europe for a month before dropping it off to be shipped to her without having VAT incurred (though it was a couple decades ago).

Yes - my question exactly.

I was strongly considering importing a 25-year-old kei truck from Japan before the tariffs were announced.

Seems to me that it's probably worth the incremental cost to buy one that's already here and registered in your state; there's a lot of unknowns in customs and vehicle licensing, and I'd rather not deal with it. But I spent my weird car slot on a 1981 Vanagon instead of a kei truck/van.

Based on what I’ve seen from states that are attempting to implement new rules, Kei trucks and cars aren’t grandfathered in, sadly.

Even buying one locally that is already registered doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be able to continue registering it.

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