The tariff bullying has had a real impact. Prices just keep changing upwards here in the US for camera gear, even as camera makers juggle country of production and other things to try to avoid them. The latest of those making "adjustments" is Fujifilm, where pretty much everything went up up 7% to as much as 11% on August 1st. This time around, the pricing will apparently hit dealer backorders if still outstanding on August 1st.
Canon and Sony have both raised almost all their prices, with Nikon currently having only raised prices of products manufactured in China. Nikon is going to raise non-China product prices on September 1st.
Given the recent "trade agreements" with several countries, including Japan and the EU, it's likely that we'll see everyone do yet another round of adjustments shortly. (Why is "trade agreement" in quotes? Technically, while trade agreements are negotiated by the executive branch, they must be ratified by the Senate [Constitution Article II, Section 2, Clause 2]. Most Americans seem unaware of this, including, apparently, half of the US Senate.)
All this repricing is fortunately not coming in the two periods of greatest camera sales—one's already passed, the other comes at the end of the year—but it's raising a lot of issues for everyone. What I'm seeing (and hearing from the dealers I talk to) is that we had a lot of "early buying," basically people getting new gear before the prices push up further. What we haven't seen yet is camera makers shifting distribution to non-tariff countries, i.e. avoiding bringing equipment into the US.
The US economy right now is confusing everyone, including the person running it, as parts of the economy appear to be impacted by all the current administration's yo-yoing, while other parts seem currently impervious to it. Personally, I believe the US camera business won't show significant impacts until the holiday rolls around. One of the things about new taxes—and tariffs are a new tax—is that the initial responses to them tend to be exaggerated, and it takes months before you can see the actual, long term impacts. For example, if you bought a camera in the US earlier this year because you were worried that prices would go up too much, you're not in the market for a camera again (and prices will have gone up by the time you are).
For this Web site, the repricing has presented a bit of a problem. I list several thousand products on this site, and it's a US-centric site. Thus, the current "Price" listed on various pages is now wrong for the majority of products here. I use list price, so I can't even use a shortcut, such as to build a widget that fetches the B&H (or other store) price. Thus, my apologies if the pricing on this site is incorrect at the moment. I'm in the midst of doing site redesigns, and I haven't gotten to sansmirror yet. My eventual "solution" will be to do a quick pass on pricing for current cameras, and leave lenses and other items for later.
