Tariffs and the model railroad industry

Tariffs are on the top of everyone’s minds these days. Model railroad enthusiasts are no exception. You may be wondering how tariffs are going to affect our hobby. Here’s some excerpts ion this topic from some of our manufacturers and suppliers.

From Walthers:

At Walthers, we are actively working with our industry partners and the broader toy industry, to advocate for tariff relief (exclusion or reduction) on model trains. At the same time, we are collaborating closely with our suppliers to absorb as much of the added cost as possible.

The recent tariff changes scheduled to take effect have further impacted pricing on many products within our hobby. As a result, effective immediately, we will no longer be able to honor back orders and advanced reservations at their original pricing. This policy will apply to all products we distribute, including Walthers-branded items and those from our vendor partners. Updated pricing will be provided
prior to shipping new products.  We will continue to monitor the situation and communicate actively with you should anything change.

If you have any rolling stock on pre-order/advanced reservation with us and you wish to cancel because of the uncertainty in pricing, let us know and we will be glad to cancel your order.

From Kadee:

Tariffs are on everyone’s mind lately, and it’s no surprise either. Our ever-increasing dependence on Chinese manufacturing means that tariffs could have a measurable impact on all of our pocketbooks. So, what’s this got to do with Kadee and the model train hobby? Why isn’t Kadee worried?

Everyone knows that Kadee’s high-quality products are made in the USA. But what does that really mean? Here are some insights you might find interesting:

• We do our own die casting and injection molding – we perform every step.
• We start with pallets of raw materials – no pre-made components.
• We design everything right here – our engineers dream it and build it.
• We make our own dies and molds in-house – no outsourced manufacturing.
• We even make our own springs – those are some tricky machines.
• We make our own packaging – car boxes, printing, etc, etc.

Pallets of raw materials come in, and packaged products go out – it’s that simple.

When most companies state their products are “Made in USA”, they tend to leave out the part that says “with imported materials and components.” Here at Kadee, we think that “assembled in the USA” is not the same as “MADE in the USA”.

OK, we can’t make everything from scratch. Screws, for example, are something we’re just not equipped to make. Some plastic packaging is also too complex for our machines. But for those very few items that we do buy, we buy from American suppliers.

When we say Made in the USA, we mean it in the most literal sense. American workers, creating American products, to provide for American families. We’ve been doing this since day 1 for over 75 years.

From the Scale Trains YouTube Channel, created by Rapido, this video worth a watch:

The following video is brought to you by the Hobby Industry Coalition and is not political. Our group is comprised of approximately 25 model train and hobby manufacturers, publishers, and wholesalers. We’ve come together to help protect small businesses like ours and advocate for tariff relief. In the coming days, the coalition will be sharing more about what we’re doing and how you can help us. Thank you for continuing to support our businesses by maintaining your current preorders and placing new preorders. We’d also like to thank Rapido Trains Inc. for the time and effort they expended to edit and produce this video. • Stock media provided by deleteme & Grishayev / Pond5 • Music provided by bensound.com