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Comment by bootsmann | Hacker News Reader

This was a big worry initially when the tariffs were announced but it doesn’t actually seem to be happening. Most manufacturers are not adjusting their price structure because the effects are super hard to estimate (don’t forget that the US is still just 20% of worldwide demand)

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The gaming market is a good example of how they tried to mitigate this. Firstly, Nintendo tried to not surge the price of the Switch 2 by instead increasing the prices of accessories. Then they raised Switch 1 prices. It might still end up needing to raise the Switch 2 price if this keeps up.

Sony and Microsoft did price hikes outside of the US at first as an example of how other countries may be paying for US tarriffs indirectly. But as of a month ago these had to relent and eventually they did both do price hikes on their systems.

This might have been true three months ago, but it isn't any more. Narrow margin business like independently owned coffee shops are already seeing consumables increase in price by up to 3x, which then leads them to have to add "tariff surcharges" that show up on their POS devices.

I think we agree?! I’m arguing that the tariff is being passed on to US prices and not distributed onto the worldwide customer base. A manufacturer that doesn't adjust their price structure is passing the price on because the tariff is applied by the government and not by the company selling the product.

Yeah that tracks.

The profit margin on selling brewed coffee is normally counted in thousands of percent. Any tariff on the imported coffee beans does not have any noticeable effect on operating costs of a coffee shop, so you can safely assume that the owners are just lying in order to jack up their prices, which might work depending on customer base.

Operating costs for coffee shops mainly come from other things than the beans, such as rent, utilities, wages.

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