{"id":9105,"date":"2025-04-09T00:01:41","date_gmt":"2025-04-09T07:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/blog\/outlook-uncertain-try-again-later\/"},"modified":"2025-04-09T00:01:41","modified_gmt":"2025-04-09T07:01:41","slug":"outlook-uncertain-try-again-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/blog\/outlook-uncertain-try-again-later\/","title":{"rendered":"Outlook uncertain, try again later\u2026?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t usually post about current events outside the sphere of pop culture, but in this case the events are broad enough they\u2019re intruding on it. The week before last Dawn and I were at WonderCon and also hearing from friends at another show out of state and the word just kept spreading of a marked slowdown in people buying; like 50% down or worse from last year, even for people who usually do really well.<\/p>\n

General consensus? People holding on to their wallets amid the uncertainty of the news, regardless of politics, since even the word from the currently in-charge Right was that there would be pain and sacrifice on the road to greatness.<\/p>\n

And that was before April 2nd when the big board of tariffs came out. For better or worse, a lot of small-time and independent creatives have been getting their goods from China in the past decades, and that\u2019s about to end hard. As I write this, the White House has confirmed the China tariff has been upped from 54% (which already had people freaking out) to 104% as of midnight tonight. This business is not one of big margins and also one of my first thoughts was \u201coh shit\u2026 Kickstarter\u201d because you hear a lot about the ones that raise millions over their minimum but most squeak by with maybe a few hundred left after factoring all the costs for production and fulfillment \u2014 which you\u2019ve done (or really should\u2019ve done) before you launched it.<\/p>\n

Futureproofing a project is also important, which is why I straight up explained to a long-time fan that plans to Kickstart and print a Volume 3 of Zombie Ranch were indefinitely suspended until I could have more certainty with the pricing. And again, that was before April 2nd. But how do you even begin to factor in the possibility that in just the span of one week the playing field would change this much?<\/p>\n

So there are a lot of currently active and also already funded (but not yet fulfilled) crowdfunding projects suddenly looking at extra costs that they didn\u2019t and maybe arguably couldn\u2019t have planned for. Over the weekend Trump also signed an EO eliminating the \u201cde minimis\u201d exemption for goods from China, set to take effect May 2nd. What\u2019s that you ask? Well, here\u2019s the EO itself:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/fact-sheets\/2025\/04\/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-closes-de-minimis-exemptions-to-combat-chinas-role-in-americas-synthetic-opioid-crisis\/#:~:text=All%20relevant%20postal%20items%20containing,after%20June%201%2C%202025)<\/a><\/p>\n

The most relevant bit for the indie set:<\/p>\n

\u201cAll relevant postal items containing goods that are sent through the international postal network that are valued at or under $800 and that would otherwise qualify for the de minimis exemption are subject to a duty rate of either 30% of their value or $25 per item (increasing to $50 per item after June 1, 2025).\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

So basically if your shipment was under a certain amount, you wouldn\u2019t have to pay duties (including the new tariffs) on it. This is bad news for some businesses I won\u2019t shed tears for, like Temu, but potentially catastrophic for the convention and Kickstarter set.<\/p>\n

Sure, the answer would be get them made onshore, but for instance we don\u2019t have any factories in the U.S. set up to make board games. Someone who funded their Kickstarter board game recently is therefore in a bit of a pickle at the moment, to put it lightly.<\/p>\n

All in all, morale is not good and I\u2019m very glad we didn\u2019t plan to launch a Volume 3 Kickstarter this year. I hope things settle down soon and before anyone has to do cancellations or \u201cclose up shop\u201d entirely, but a lot of indie folk likely won\u2019t have the ability to weather this for long.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t usually post about current events outside the sphere of pop culture, but in this case the events are broad enough they\u2019re intruding on it. The week before last Dawn and I were at WonderCon and also hearing from friends at another show out of state and the word just kept spreading of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ERFy-2mR","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9033,"url":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/blog\/playing-cowpokes-and-aliens\/","url_meta":{"origin":9105,"position":0},"title":"Playing cowpokes and aliens\u2026","author":"dawn","date":"February 26, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"The Eaton Fire was a very near miss on our place and it was good to take a break while we dealt with insurance, cleanup, etc. It could have been a lot worse for us but being on the frontlines of a natural disaster is a heck of a thing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog"","block_context":{"text":"Blog","link":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/category\/blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/files\/2025\/02\/xcomsuzie-c35ZrT.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/files\/2025\/02\/xcomsuzie-c35ZrT.jpeg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/files\/2025\/02\/xcomsuzie-c35ZrT.jpeg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/files\/2025\/02\/xcomsuzie-c35ZrT.jpeg?resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/files\/2025\/02\/xcomsuzie-c35ZrT.jpeg?resize=1050%2C600 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/files\/2025\/02\/xcomsuzie-c35ZrT.jpeg?resize=1400%2C800 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9037,"url":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/blog\/looking-forwards\/","url_meta":{"origin":9105,"position":1},"title":"Looking forwards\u2026","author":"dawn","date":"December 11, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"I\u2019m not a \u201cfive year plan\u201d kind of guy, for the most part. I guess Zombie Ranch might be an exception just based on it existing for 14 years and counting. We\u2019ve slowed down considerably but haven\u2019t stopped, which is more than I can say for most of our peers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog"","block_context":{"text":"Blog","link":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/category\/blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9038,"url":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/blog\/league-of-extraordinary-animation\/","url_meta":{"origin":9105,"position":2},"title":"League of extraordinary animation\u2026","author":"dawn","date":"November 20, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Is the term \u201ckiller app\u201d still in parlance in the tech community? If not, quick rundown: hardware by itself doesn\u2019t sell, or at least doesn\u2019t sell for long. This is particularly true with game consoles and is why they tend to jealously guard their library of IPs. I remember the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog"","block_context":{"text":"Blog","link":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/category\/blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}