Photographic film is on the new list of tariffs

x-ray said:
This isn't a personal thing so let's not go there.

Birmingham and Besemer Alabama were steel centers at one time and now there's no evidence there was ever any steel production ever. Even near my home there was a manganese steel mill but it's gone now. Their product was used in automobiles.

Nothing political and nothing personal here.
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I worked in Bessemer, Alabama in the 60's to early 70's as an engineer. It was unbelievable how costly the labor was in those plants. The companies brought it on themselves though IMO.

No, I don't believe, based on history that starting a trade war is going to solve the problem.
 
So, as to film. The price will go up more than it has already - both for imported and US produced film. Film sales will drop a little more and life will go on.
 
I still have a ton of ULF film from Photo warehouse back in the day..
11x14...7x17...12x20..and even some 16x20..dont even know if its any good anymore..not frozen..
Wouldn't want to buy it today..
 
My college car was a AMC Hornet, which was the cousin of the Gremlin! I used to refer to it as a "faithful car". It broke down regularly but only locally and never on trips.
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Those were the days..!
My 1st car..was a 65 Chevy Impala bought in 74....my friends called it..the "black bomb"..lol..smashed up on 1 side..bought it for $75-..then sold it at a 2x's profit a couple of years later...!
Went everywhere in that thing..was a pro musician back then..on 1 gig during a snowstorm..the wipers broke midway..and we drove slowly down the road..wiping a lil hole of the snow with our hands so I could see the road....on another gig..on the way to it..the rear license plate plopped off at 70 mph on the highway..I saw it bounce into the brush in the rear view mirror..never to be seen again..when I came out of the gig at 2am..cops were surrounding the car in its parking spot..I asked..whats wrong officer?..they said..there is no license plate on this car..I replied..I lost it on route 95...they said..ok..just get a new one..
Then 1 time..the brakes totally failed..so I used the emergency brake to avoid hitting the guy in front of me at the traffic light...ahhh...
Those were the days..!
 
Emile de Leon said:
Where did ya get those figures???
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/timwor...rporate-profits-are-36-of-sales/#21af6ec61122

This Forbes article lists a Yahoo! Finance database of 212 industries that finds a mean profit of 7.5%.

The article also talks about WalMart, an oft-quoted example of "corporate greed" or whatever. As it turns out, WM's margins are somewhere in the vicinity of 3%. That is 3 cents for every dollar you spend there.

WalMart seems to be doing fine so I have to disagree with your statement about going out of business with that low of a profit margin. Obviously, margins are heavily dependent on the type of business, size, and scale.
 
Emile de Leon said:
Those were the days..!
My 1st car..was a 65 Chevy Impala bought in 74....my friends called it..the "black bomb"..lol..smashed up on 1 side..bought it for $75-..then sold it at a 2x's profit a couple of years later...!
Went everywhere in that thing..was a pro musician back then..on 1 gig during a snowstorm..the wipers broke midway..and we drove slowly down the road..wiping a lil hole of the snow with our hands so I could see the road....on another gig..on the way to it..the rear license plate plopped off at 70 mph on the highway..I saw it bounce into the brush in the rear view mirror..never to be seen again..when I came out of the gig at 2am..cops were surrounding the car in its parking spot..I asked..whats wrong officer?..they said..there is no license plate on this car..I replied..I lost it on route 95...they said..ok..just get a new one..
Then 1 time..the brakes totally failed..so I used the emergency brake to avoid hitting the guy in front on me..ahhh...
Those were the days..!.
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The Hornet had better acceleration than a Camaro. A small 6-cylinder engine with character.
 
This Forbes article lists a Yahoo! Finance database of 212 industries that finds a mean profit of 7.5%.

The article also talks about WalMart, an oft-quoted example of "corporate greed" or whatever. As it turns out, WM's margins are somewhere in the vicinity of 3%. That is 3 cents for every dollar you spend there.

WalMart seems to be doing fine so I have to disagree with your statement about going out of business with that low of a profit margin. Obviously, margins are heavily dependent on the type of business, size, and scale.
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212 industries only..probably cherry picked..to slant a political or economic POV..as in..we don't make a lot of money..see...here's the figures..
sure..Walmart..maybe at 3% if that's true..they sell billions..
The smaller mom and pops..and even med sized businesses..have to make a lot more to survive..ask any of em..
Maybe those figures are after taxes, expenses etc..or...cookin the books if you will..as in..not true figures..
Ask any businessman who is in it..
7.5% profit..fogetabout it..you are out of business..
For every 1 million $$ sold @ 7.5%..$75,000 profit..
For every $100,000 sold @ 7.5%..$7,500- profit..
7.5% is unsustainable..unless billions sold..
 
Depends on the Camaro. My friend had one with a factory 427 engine (which was not supposed to be available, so they put 396 emblems on the fenders). That thing had about an actual 650 HP after he put some headers on it and did a little head work. It ran a quarter mike in 11 something seconds at over 120 MPH with slicks and a 4:57 locked differential.

We USED to make great cars in the US. The original Mustang is still a sought after classic, the Corvette is pretty snazzy, and a few other models were top drawer. But no, we never were good at making the highly refined stuff like the Germans. Of course, we won't bring up the subject of French cars here......pretty bad cars. Then there were the British cars of the 70's with Lucas electrics. Lucas, the Prince of Darkness! My first car was an MG 1100 sedan. Three days after buying it the entire electrical system went up in smoke. Having worked on Fiats at dealerships, the Italians were capable of making junk cars quite as well, or as badly, as anybody else.

Ford did manage to beat Ferrari at Le Mans and Daytona with their GT 40, which is still one of the most desirable cars in the world, both the original and the reissued version. For almost two decades, if your Formula One car wasn't powered by a Ford Cosworth engine you couldn't win much. What killed us here in the US w/ cars was when we were building junk in the 70's, the Japanese were importing small, efficient quality cars with excellent dealerships and service. It's been catch up ever since, and now our robots are almost as good as theirs, so the quality has gone up even if the engineering hasn't.

We did manage to put people on the moon, remember? We weren't always stupid. Just now we're not so smart anymore. The whole culture has collapsed, and it's been done by design by Big Corporations in order to have a huge workforce not trained well enough to do much besides their low paying crap jobs. It's all about the bottom line baby.
 
I forgot about Fiat...and MG's..and Renault..dogs all..then there was...Yugo..King of Dogs...lol..
Now Volvo..thats another story..
I owned 2..a 64 sedan..and a 61 P1800...luved em..my mom bought a 72 DL and put 250,000 on it..
Sure they broke down too..but they were tough as nails..as in..mom took out a taxi in nyc..it didn't stand a chance..she drove away after...w/ slight dent only...taxi...well...taps was heard in the backround ..
 
BillBingham2 said:
It's our fault when the responsibility to shareholders became more important than the responsibility to customers, employees, retirees, and civilization in general.


B2 (;->
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Oh Bill, don't you remember? Corporations are PEOPLE! Now, if only *those* people bought more film...in bulk! (There, did I avoid the dreaded off-topic tag?) ;)
 
C’mon the USA makes the greatest military equipment in the world. And NATO better cough up more dough or else. Made in the USA used in foreign land with pride!
 
Emile de Leon said:
212 industries only..probably cherry picked..to slant a political or economic POV..as in..we don't make a lot of money..see...here's the figures..
sure..Walmart..maybe at 3% if that's true..they sell billions..
The smaller mom and pops..and even med sized businesses..have to make a lot more to survive..ask any of em..
Maybe those figures are after taxes, expenses etc..or...cookin the books if you will..as in..not true figures..
Ask any businessman who is in it..
7.5% profit..fogetabout it..you are out of business..
For every 1 million $$ sold @ 7.5%..$75,000 profit..
For every $100,000 sold @ 7.5%..$7,500- profit..
7.5% is unsustainable..unless billions sold..
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That's nonsense. It's 212 industries, not 212 specific businesses. If you think every -fact- is just cherry-picking to support something you don't already believe then you are in the grips of confirmation bias.

Of course it's after expenses. Hence the term profit margin, not gross sales. You have to pay people, buy products, pay taxes, etc. This cuts into your margin.

The simple fact here is large corporations, the ones people love to hate, by and large do not have massive margins. Yes your mom and pop needs to operate at a higher margin because they have infinitesimally smaller sales than, say, WalMart. The article I posted in fact is all about how most Americans think corporate profits are 36% while in fact being ~7.5%.
 
Some call that corporate greed..some call it...business as usual..but in any case..good ole' Walmart..aint gonna like.. Tariffs..nope..they aint gonna like that at all..
Of course..some Chinese made products..seem to be tariff exempt..at this point in time..
 
You are just making up a scenario which conforms to your worldview. This has no basis in facts or data. You can spin anything to be good or bad by just making stuff up. Some would say that's the problem in today's politics in fact.

WM employs 1.4 million people. The CEO for this fiscal year apparently received pay of 22.8 million. I don't understand why people are so worried about what the CEO gets paid. Let's say he works for ZERO and redistributes his pay to the workers. They would each get a nice bonus of about $16. Yay!

I find that most people don't know much about economic theory nor do they think critically about the actual business part when it comes to the bigger picture. I'm not an economist either but the numbers are there.

BTW, this doesn't mean I am "for" tariffs. But the divergence into business "margins" is important to consider. But most of this is all hot air.
 
I've been in business retail and wholesale for 25 years importing..own my own business..and am about to semi retire..
The avg person has no idea about any of this..
It does not matter in any case..
As we are just having fun here..
 
I run my own business and have for over a decade. It's a service business and not a large business. That's great that you run your own business as well but like mentioned earlier...this isn't a discussion of mom and pop shops but multi-million/billion dollar industries.

Your argument is I don't know what I'm talking about because I'm reading articles from Forbes and not running a multi-million dollar business. To be fair if the only person you believe is a big business man then I guess the president is a good source.

You're right it doesn't matter on this pointless forum thread. Just wanted to point out that corporate profits are not as high as many think, not make up scenarios about WM. You asked for a source so I gave. Take it up with Forbes.
 
Back on topic: The question raised by the OP Huss was which consequences the actions could have on film:
So, if these tariffs get really implemented, China will immediately react: Tit for tat.
The Chinese government has just said that some hours ago.

The Chinese film market / demand is one of the biggest in the world (on second or third position). That means: The Chinese are buying much more Kodak film, photo paper and photo chemistry than the Americans are buying Chinese silver-halide photo products from Lucky and Shanghai.

So the big loser will be Kodak and its workers!

Let's hope that the Kodak Bosses can convince the White House that the silver-halide photo products get eliminated from this list.

Cheers, Jan
 
In the late 90's I wanted to buy an American car to support American workers and the US auto industry. I bought a Chrysler. Nothing more American than a Chrysler, right? I later learned that that "American" car I bought was more-or-less a Mitsubishi somethingorother that Chrysler slapped a different body on. Kinda like that Leica digital point-n-shoot you have is really a shamelessly and obviously re-badged Panasonic Lumix. (Talk about playin' consumers for foo'z) Car was a dog, by the way. But I can't say it was due to faulty "American" engineering.

Point being -- it's a global economy with a sophisticated supply chain. It's designed on a 31st floor office somewhere in some country -- no production facility attached. Raw materials come from one place. Components somewhere else. Assembled somewhere else. Shipped/sold somewhere else. This is especially true of tech, machines with many components. Not everything is like "wine" that must come from Burgundy to be called "burgundy". Or a whiskey that must follow a similarly strict rule set to be labeled legally as bourbon. Raw materials are mined where that raw material is plentiful. Labor intensive processes are shipped to where labor is plentiful and cheap. In the 90's I worked in project management in large customer service concerns. Long distance telco rates kept that work locked domestically. VOIP came along and -snap- like that, that entire industry more-or-less when overseas, being outbid by overseas competition with rates that didn't even cover our variable costs.

Soon -- very soon, AI will replace those call center jobs and many, many other jobs too as voice recognition and machine "sight" improves. You're a manager? Managers stink at their jobs -- part-n-parcel of our evolution-adhoc ape-brains. Trust me, if a computer can demolish our best Go players, it can do your manager job. Capitalism. The goal is to drive cost out of production -- including labor. You, hon, are "wetware". Hate t' break it t' ya. And wetware only has a job until it/you can be replaced by hardware/firmware/software. Learn to love it -- or at least deal with it without slumping into depression, and a pattern of self-medication -- opioid and/or alcohol addiction. "Wetware" (human beings) is suboptimal and expensive. Wetware is used in capitalism until it can be replaced by a machine asset. Your livelihood is temporary by its very nature. Universal basic income? Better take a hard look at that. A hard, hard look. But we won't. That's too forward thinking. Ermahgawd -- socialism!!! And our laughable leaders are talkin' "tariffs" like it's 17th century mechantilsm.

Aside from relatively simple products like booze, for many items the phrase "made in _____" is hopelessly outdated. Or? Perhaps ISO can create some kind of standard that producing nations must follow to lay claim to the "made in" phrase that's akin to the aforementioned bourbon (51% of this, 30% of that, no more than X components outsourced from...) Regardless. Hardly matters now.

Meanwhile we're on the cusp of the 21st century second industrial revolution, the impact of which will dwarf that of its predecessor, which was the single biggest transformative event in human history.

Truth is stranger than fiction -- and often more frightening. I reiterate -- elections have consequences. Big ones. Big BIG ones.
 
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