Modern Vespa

TEMU has those inner tubes and tires with NO tariff fees and free shipping !!

"Temu" and "Things I depend on to keep me alive on the road" are two tastes that definitely don't taste great together.

Temu knows nothing about tariffs and they don't care, your problem sir

3.50x8 tube for 13.5$ is super expensive !!!!!

Well to be fair…. Those tires ain't for the road if ya know what I mean

That's not how tariffs work unfortunately. It's a tax on the consumer, not the overseas vendor.

I sort of disagree. Tariffs are essentially fees overseas middlemen and exporters (in this case SIP) are assessed for the 'privilege' of selling products to US customers.

The US is like a big swap meet; tariffs are the entry fee overseas vendors pay for a booth at our swap meet. Other countries have been imposing tariffs on our vendors for decades.

Some - like SIP - pass that charge on to us because they pretty much have a monopoly on the stuff we want and we're willing to tolerate the extra cost. We're certainly not obligated to pay it. Maybe we won't downstream. Would be interesting to see a breakdown of their US vs non-US sales.

I for one wouldn't mind seeing more US-based manufacturers, like Claus Studios.

Whaddaya say Gick?

I want to be careful to keep this appropriate for this forum. If a tire normally costs $50 and a 10% tariff is added, the final cost will be $55.

SIP, or Gickspeed aren't going to just eat that increase, just as they wouldn't eat a price increase from one of their suppliers. They will pass that cost along to the consumer. If SIP absorbed the tariff cost, they'd be spreading that increase among all of their customers. That wouldn't be fair to someone living outside the USA.

US Sales Is probably SIP's least buyer, no doubt.

How do you make a million in US scooter parts sales? Start out with 2.

However you want to phrase it, it comes down to "what does a US buyer pay for that SIP shock?"
If it's X + 20% (not sure of the actual percentage), then that US buyer is paying 20% more for exactly the same product that an Italian, Australian, Canadian etc does for the privilege of purchasing exactly the same product.

It's a cost borne by the US buyer and not Malossi, SIP, Polini or 10Pollici. They're not making money out of this.

That's a pretty creative way to put it. If you pay for a booth at a swap meet, you're paying a fixed fee for the space, regardless of whether you sell your entire stock, or none of it. And the way the fee indirectly affects the price of each item depends on how many items are sold, as it is a one time fee that is effectively applied to the vendor, not a fee applied to each item, which is what we have in the case of tariffs.

That being said, tariffs are a long time coming imo. There has been a long-running lack of reciprocity in international tariffs in favor of foreign nations, that is ultimately unsustainable.

What sucks is that the correction is not only applicable to mainstream/everyday products such as those that can actually be sourced or justify manufacturing in the US, but also to hardly transposable fringe specialty markets such as the Italian vintage scooter aftermarket products market.

From the US consumers' perspective, the harm done by unbalanced trade relations with foreign partners is easy to overlook. After all, we had access to cheap products from around the world, while the effects of throttled exports due to lack of access to foreign markets were too subtle to be easily attributable to foreign protectionist policies, so mostly went unnoticed outside of the business community.

Meanwhile, in Europe, buying anything directly from the US has meant paying a premium in import fees, VAT, and the shipper brokerage fees from hell, for years.

You guys had those sweet PX200s with rectangular headlights and the most complete speedometers I've ever seen on a vespa. I wouldn't mind paying tariffs to import one of those

For clarity sake, I must respectfully disagree with the assessment here. Please understand I do not intend this to be anything personal at all, I only intend to bring some clarity to the discussion; from my own perspective and experience.

For the last 20 years, I have worked in import/export and international manufacturing; contracted with the 4th largest public corporation worldwide in our industry. This brand retail sales almost $10 BILLION annually. We contract and handle manufacturing overseas, with our own factories, parter factories; and directly deal with all production costs, import/export costs, processes, taxes, fees, freight, tariffs etc. Concept to retail store, we do it all.

For purposes of this discussion my points below are strictly in regard to USA:

Simply put "Tariff" is just another word for "Import Tax" or "Duty".
A Tariff/Import Tax/Duty is charged by the USA Government to the Importer/Receiver of imported goods. The receiver pays the import tax to the USA government. Tariff's are not charged to the middle men, exporter, sender, or the country of origin. They are infact charged to, and paid by the Importer/Receiver. The money goes to the USA government.

We the consumers here in the states often don't see the import taxes and fees directly, because historically these costs are 'rolled into' the overall retail price of the imported products we buy. Jus because you dont see it, doesn't mean you arent' paying it.

Example 1: I buy a product from China valued at $100, and have it shipped to me in USA. The product lands in USA, and the US Government assesses an Import Tax(tariff) based on the country of origin and value of said product. Let's say the assessed tariff is 40%. So, I (the importer/receiver), must pay an Import Tax to the US Government of $40 (40% of $100).

Example 2: A USA based brand orders product from a manufacturer in China. The product will be shipped from China, and sold at retail in USA. The Chinese manufacturer charges the USA company $20 per product. USA company orders 1'000 pieces, for a total order of $20'000. The US Government assesses an Import Tax(tariff) based on the country of origin and first-cost of said product. Let's say the assessed tariff is 40%. So, the USA brand (the importer/receiver), must pay an Import Tax to the US Government of $8 per piece (40% of $20) which is $8'000 (40% of $20'000).

The landed cost of said product is now $28. Double this for the wholesale price: $56. Double this for the retail price: $112

What would have been an $80 retail priced product with zero tariff, now costs $112 with $40. These costs are ALWAYS passed on to the consumer. Always.

In Summary:
The international manufacturer, sender, exporter is not liable in any way for these taxes. Sometimes the sender will broker the fee's and pay them on your behalf to make the sales easier. Then that cost is passed on to the buyer, sometimes with an added broker fee.

The USA government charges the tariff to the USA citizen-or-company that received the imported goods.

The USA citizen that is received the imported goods pays the tariff to the USA government.

Any funds that the government has received due to the new tariff policies have been paid by US Citizens and Corporations. It is a TAX on us, not on any other countries or international parties. WE are the ones being charged and paying for these new policies.

I am intentionally not broaching the topic of bringing back manufacturing to the USA. That is a separate conversation, and IMHO; broaches on the political spectrum. Personal opinions aside, my intention with this write up is to bring clarity to the real world processes and effects of tariffs/import taxes/duties.

Thanks Geek. I was under the impression that SIP was backcharging Malcolm to recoup additional tariff charges after they agreed - and he already paid them - to deliver for a stipulated amount that included some customs charges. I've never ordered from them directly, so I don't know what their fine print says as far who's responsible for additional duties and tariffs imposed after shipment.

Totally understood. Its fairly confusing, and I've known so many people who believe that that other countries pay the tariff (import tax), but there is only one liable party; the receiver of goods.

If international sellers decided to not broker tariff's on our behalf, we'd receive a bill for each and every imported shipment.

We have been fortunate to have systems in place to make the tariff paying process easy, streamlined; and almost invisible.Costs paid upfront by the corporations, or hidden from view; or even better - no tariff at all. Now with new policies, changing tariff rates, and a general uneasyness of the future; we are being forced to look at all this in detail and depth

The cost of tariffs is but one aspect of the overall cost of goods. There's also marketing costs, logistics/storage costs, economies of scale, ability to source alternative suppliers, etc. that matter. For example, some competitors can be quite sensitive to changes in market share, such that price increases tend to be a cautious affair. In essence, they don't want to create opportunities for a rival to swoop in and undersell them, so they eat some of the cost.

As such, the burden of tariffs may be carried in whole or in part by the consumer, the retailer, a distributor, or even the exporter (e.g., b/c they may cut wholesale prices to improve sales numbers). Obviously, anyone selling goods doesn't want to incur any costs of tariffs if they can, but that isn't always the best business position.

Totally true 572. When tariff increases happen, sellers don't want to raise prices; for the reasons you specified. Raising prices is a contentious affair here in the states and the world. Some markets have narrow price margins, so the consumer will notice and not necessarily tolerate increases.

Tariff increases can be split, shared, or absorbed by the suppliers; to offset the increased tariff that will be paid by the buyer. That way they avoid increasing prices, and continue placing orders and selling product. But this only works for a short period of time. This a typical strategy when the outcome is uncertain. Eventually, the supplier and/or buyer can no longer eat the cost increase (at expense of their profit margin); so the increased cost gets passed on through the chain ending in increased retail price. Its unavoidable.

True.

But, considering SIP has no equal into US (with US manufactured product), why would they reduce their margin ? US customers will pay tariffs from their own pockets.
They would reduce their margin (so lowering the price of products) to stay competitive compared to an foreign company that would sell the same products from a country who may pay a lower tariff, but there is none !

Would it be interesting to built a factory to produce vespa parts on US soil ?

2 questions :
What represent the US market for Vespa parts ?
Will these tariffs hold forever ? (Trump changes his mind so quickly, may not be a good idea to invest there...)

I guess US customers will pay max tariffs for a while

If you want to understand a (very) little more about international trade and national trade policy, keep reading. Otherwise...

TL;DR: Import taxes ("tariffs") are (intended to be) a national trade policy tool to prevent predatory behavior by a trading partner. Other uses are like trying to hammer screw into a board: Wrong tool for the job and will generally do more damage than good.


First, understand the baseline; the average import duty into the US was a little over 2%, so less than a retailer paid for their credit card processing fees. Most foreign markets charged the US or other "favored nations," i.e. signatories to trade treaties, ZERO PERCENT import taxes other than specifically negotiated industries which that nation deemed strategically significant, usually because they provided mass employment within that country, and even then, the duties would be quite low.

Second, since someone mentioned Balance of Trade, which is a woefully misunderstood concept since it refers only to the value of hard goods shipments, meaning physical stuff that has to be shipped. In the current modern era, physical goods are a low value add thing.

In the same way that machining steel into finished products is better work and more economically valuable than mining and smelting ore (would you rather be a machinist or working on the ore face?), so designing the machines is more valuable than manufacturing them (or so the reasoning goes). Thus, much manufacturing was off shored starting in the 90's is because more valuable economic activities, in particular the much-maligned services sector, took precedence in the US.

So all the money that flows into the US economy from other countries for services, which is everything from management consulting (whose value is arguable, but work with me here...), software development, R&D work (and subsequent technology or manufacturing license fees), and more recently, digital services like Netflix subscription fees.

All the payments to US firms shows up in the flow of funds data, which includes payments for hard goods (i.e. the balance of trade), but also everything from remittances (money that immigrants send home to their families) to tourism spending, to (in some measures) transfers for drugs, illegal armaments, and other trans-national criminal activities.

Now whether or not this hollowing out of industrial capacity was a good or a bad thing is a topic that is still hotly debated (I fall into "good thing, to a point" position), but that's getting even further off-topic than we already are. Or maybe solidly on-topic, since 20th and 21st century purpose for import taxes was protectionism, providing government enforced revenue supports for domestic extraction and manufacturing industries which were otherwise not price-competitive with overseas competitors.

Trade wars since the 1970's have generally been a result of countries' economic policy efforts to attain market dominance in other countries' markets, frequently through what's called "dumping." This is where the exporter's government subsidizes an industry so that it can sell its products into an overseas market below cost to seize market share and/or bankrupt the local competitors, leaving their exports as the only option in the market.

As an example of how this is supposed to work, look at the semiconductor trade war.

In the 1980's and 1990's Japan tried to gain dominance in semi-conductors (especially memory chips) using this tactic. In response, the US passed anti-dumping legislation (among other actions) that imposed import duties on any company importing Japanese chips or products that used Japanese chips. This allowed firms like Intel, AMD, and a variety of others most people have ever heard of, to remain competitive in a volatile market period.

The terms of the anti-dumping legislation was clear, identifying specific behaviors and resulting tariff penalties, which rolled back as the anti-competitive actions were reversed. That, in turn, gave US chip companies confidence in their long term potential for competition and thus to invest in R&D, along with manufacturing facilities ("wafer fabs," i.e. chip factories) take years to build and cost billions of dollars, even back then, so it was a major long term capital investment, even for huge companies.

So assuming you read this far, you now have a better understanding of what import taxes are and aren't, along with their intended role in national trade policy.

SIP has competitors both foreign and domestic with respect to the US. Moreover, much of what they sell are not SIP exclusives or without comparable substitutes, so opportunities exist to bypass them and get lower wholesale costs. There's also price elasticity that affects how much you can raise prices, economies of scale that requires volume production to be cost efficient, and so on. Overall you can reasonably expect a substantial shift in prices, but the argument that the consumer will pay the entirety of tariffs in general is overly simplistic. After all, if someone cuts tariffs, would you expect consumers to necessarily enjoy all the windfall? Probably not.

SIP could lower prices, their margin is enormous compared to Italian sites.

The thing is that they offer a massive range of products, I guess they are popular in US because you can almost purchase everything you need within 1 shipment. Shipping costs are killing small suppliers for long distance

Wow that got deep really quickly. Up to dat shipping news. I ordered a nice crank from Italy the week before the tariffs (taxes) were due to kick in. Ordered the Wednesday a week and a half before Black Friday! Anyway they didn't ship until last Thursday. Bugger thinks me but they shipped DHL Express which was at least still shipping unlike most European postal services. Anyhooos, it landed on our shores this weekend and due delivery tomorrow. No indication of tax due even after clearing customs. I will update if any CoD is due when they deliver tomorrow. All fingers and toes x'd as I can see them saying f it if we haven't got a system in place yet and millions of parcels arriving daily let's send it through otherwise we run out of storage and have no one to do the paperwork. Cheers

I'm waiting to be told I need to pay Uncle Sam now that my big Riverside SIP order, which also went DHL, finally hit stateside this morning.

I'm just fingers crossed that I get it.

good luck to both you guys^^

I ordered through Mercato just after the tariffs went into effect. Haven't been charged anything yet as the order from SIP hasn't arrived to them. Waiting to see and hoping for the best.

Iam waiting on sip for a cost of a new unpainted 2025 GTS310 frame.

I will ship fed ex intl economy to California as I get 55% discount from Europe inbound.

All other parts on order from local dealer unpainted, can't order the frame unpainted in the USA .

Rear trim assys rh/lh
Glove box Assy
Euro from Fender
Both sides of handle bar trim
360.00 complete

Iam doing a Gulf Blue in two stage paint as Iam not happy with the finish on the factory paint.


GB

You're in good hands with Dave.

Dude knows as much about supply chains and import/export as anyone I've ever met (and I've worked with my share of supply chain people over the years).

The crank delivered today and let's just say I dodged a bullet. The customs system must be in chaos right now. Phew!

Scooter Mercato has helpfully laid out their SIP ordering process. Nice and transparent. https://tinyurl.com/2s4bfpax