ANDPIERRES (Nicholas King)
CREATOR
4 months ago
Project Update: US fulfillment update pt 3: potential tariff charge (PLEASE READ)
hello all! here's an update on US shipping that's been a long time coming. the reason for the long wait is primarily due to the fact that the US and china were set to negotiate a new trade agreement around the beginning of november, and i wanted to wait and see the results of that before getting back into the fulfillment process! so here's what i know so far:
- in terms of tariffs on items from china into the US: from my understanding, until november next year, the base tariff amount applied to goods imported from china is now down to 10%. this is great news!! hearing this, i was excited to get back into the fulfillment process, since i was happy to foot a 10% bill as opposed to the 30 - 80% that was proposed before. HOWEVER...
- the shipping & tariff payment processor i use still has the tariff rate on goods from china set to 34%. so, when i did a few test orders last night, i was still paying massively for each shipment -- shipping 5 packages cost me nearly $100 CAD. so what's going on!!
- i've reached out to the shipping company for clarification, but unfortunately, my best guess is that the retaliatory tariff rate imposed on the US towards canada applies to all shipments COMING from canada, despite the country of origin of the items in question. the retaliatory tariff rate is 34%, so that would make sense.
- if that's the case, there is no way i could afford to absorb the cost of a 34% tariff on everyone's orders. especially since i have to use shopify integration for shipping due to being outside of the US, and shopify calculates the value of each package based on my regular store prices for each item, not the price you all paid as backers of the project. so, even if you only paid ~ $30 for your pledge tier (just as an example), i'm paying tariff fees on a declared value closer to $50 or $80 depending on how many free bonus items/discounts you got with your pledge tier. this is something i would have planned for ahead of time if i'd known while building the campaign that i would be moving countries haha 🙃 but now we know!
- THE GOOD NEWS: i emailed backerkit about all this about a month ago, and they were able to enable a tariff collection system on the campaign directly, and when testing it out i was able to retroactively apply the charge to all US orders that haven't yet been shipped. so, once i confirm if the tariff rate truly is supposed to be that high, i'll be able to collect tariffs from you guys using your cards on file. (i haven't charged anything yet since i'm still waiting for the shipping/tariff company to get back to me!)
so! that's all i've got to share so far! i processed about 5 orders last night while i was testing out the tariff rates, so if you were one of them, you'll be getting a shipping email today. for everyone else: please keep hanging tight while i wait for tariff confirmation! i don't want to charge you guys that 34% tariff rate & then have it turn out that it was just an error on the processor's end.
international orders will continue to trickle out as the last remaining pledge items arrive (i got some more stickers & the keychain lanyards in over the course of the last month).
i'll send out another update before i charge cards for the tariff rate, if that ends up being necessary, so you'll have time to reach out for a refund instead if the tariff charge would be too expensive for you. so keep an eye on your email for that!
& of course, as always, feel free to reach out to me via email ([email protected]) if you have any other questions.
thanks for all your patience everyone!! i'm CROSSING my fingers that we can get the campaign close to being completely fulfilled by the end of the year.
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