China trade: What now?

[Thaddeusrex]

This is an honest, non-political post, and question. I’m building my ‘72, and buying parts, tools, and supplies almost daily. I try like hell to buy American for mostly quality reasons, but as we all know, that’s tough to do. Now that trade with China is effectively halted, what’s gonna happen now? What should I load up on? I’m super worried about even the Made in USA big ticket items like a transmission because a huge number of the internals might come from China. Should I bite the bullet and buy one a year before I need it? That’s a lot of dough to have sitting around. Do we load up on consumables? Again, honest and non-political here, I just would appreciate your thoughts.

 

[1969]

I just posted this in another thread. A Chinese bronco body manufacturer is moving their assembly to California.

Post in thread 'Chinese Bronco Body - anyone seen on in person?'
https://classicbroncos.com/forums/t...-anyone-seen-on-in-person.325045/post-3588963

 

[JB Fab]

My 2C......
I personally wouldn't buy a transmission a year early 'just in case'... warranty ticking down as it sits in the corner. A lot is going to happen in a year too.
Fasteners, door latches, stuff like that are going to increase, but even if the price triples on some of the small stuff how does that affect the final cost of the build?
It seems the news media has everyone thinking the sky is falling. As I write this, business are are working hard to make sure they will have what you need when you need it, at a competitive price. The items that China has a global domination of the market that 100% made/packaged, ready to sell as soon as they open the container IE: toys. Are the things that are going to increase in price and therefore will be the thing that the 'hair-on-fire' news media will trying to use to get higher ratings.
Us for instance, 90% of the materials we use are produced in the USA. Unfortunately almost all the fasteners are made in China, if the cost of the fasteners triples that only adds ~$10 to the price. The wild card is: if a different industry needs large quantities of stainless steel that they were getting from China, that would create a demand environment in the USA.
Labor/shipping are still the biggest cost variables with our products.

 

[Thaddeusrex]

Seems like pretty much all of Eastwood’s stuff is made in China too, as well as other companies like that. I hope they can weather the storm ok.

 

[AZ73]

It's going to be over relatively quickly. I'd wait on anything you don't immediately need.

 

[Grey owl]

Probably good advice, I am not so sure this will be over any time soon. Hopefully it will.