In Reply to: Real business folk on the impact of tariffs. posted by BluBlood on July 16, 2025 at 17:40:39
It's in lots of stuff already. I retired but I was a Facilities manager for over 20 years. I dealt with trades regularly, HVAC, electricians etc.
I'm selling a ton of my fishing gear right now mainly fly fishing as I'm downsizing. about 5 weeks ago I sold a big boat rod to a guy in Australia who collects them. He gave me the specs and a pic of a Home Depot receipt for the type of PVC he wanted me to buy to put the rod in to ship to him. So I had the exact part # and cost of it. He'd bought a rod from a guy in So Cal and that was 4 weeks earlier. When I went to HD, it cost 20% more for the exact same thing and they told me, PVC has gone up (not all certain schedules) because of tariffs.
2 weeks ago I sold a bunch of gear to a guy who runs his own HVAC service and install business in a town called Orangevale. He showed up with a big wad of cash and told me he has all the cash because the only way he can get around tariffs right now is paying cash to vendors and distributors to get them to sell him stock they got before tariffs, otherwise the prices have all gone up due to tariffs. All the materials he uses to install them, like unistrut(steel) etc all has gone up 20-30%. He was joking I swear I'm not a drug dealer but I get discounts paying cash and then I give my customers discounts for paying cash too, otherwise the tariffs would be crushing me.
It's in the mid 90's here, he said high 90's where he is so HVAC is a good business at the right time of year but he's seen a distinct slowdown because of tariffs which is why he's gotten creative. He also said people are begging him to fix old equipment rather than buy new because they're all afraid to spend money. He tells them if you wait the cost will be much higher with tariffs but I get why you don't want to buy new.
Same with plywood, and all kinds of other stuff in the trades.