The SteelNavy.Com Message Board: Re: WOW!!!!

Hi Lars,

I agree that the decline of injection plastic model manufacturing was happening well before the rise of Dragon and Red Banner Models. Part of it was due to the changing demographics, lackluster products, and minimal subject availability. Armor kits are a perfect example. You started with the Monogram kits, pretty basic, then along came Tamiya, better, and then Dragon, even better. As the technology developed, some companies worked hard to use it and make better, more detailed models, and others rested on the laurels, and now remembered nostalgically. That's just the nature of business.

Will these tariffs start businesses? Well, both you and I don't know that. Someone may find a niche that can be exploited and make a business of it. You mention dynamic producers. Who has pre-determined another one may not come about? Injection molding is an established knowledge, and is done all over the world. Who says it can only be done in one place? Also, it isn't very labor intensive (as opposed to, say, auto manufacturing), so that isn't really a limiting factor. There's plenty of injection molding still happening in the US, so a supply of raw material must be available, albeit at an increased cost. And who says that this new manufacturer, if it's created, just has to make plastic models? Injection molding is used for all sorts of products. Do you think the companies in China ONLY make one type of item?

Right now the tariffs seem to be the nadir of modeling, but only if the doom spiral most are clutching their pearls about is actively worked upon and advanced. None of us know what will eventually happen, and just say, for the sake of the argument, these present tariffs do what is hoped to happen, and free trade results? What then?

Jon

Previous Message

US plastic kit manufacturers were in steep decline before the rise of the Chinese manufacturers. By the early 1990s, US producers were hardly releasing anything new. The most dynamic producers were the Japanese, but also, for example, the Czech and Polish producers.

The Chinese tariffs had nothing to do with the decline of the US producers.

Tariffs would not help to restart the business in the US because the US market alone is too small for plastic kits. Plastic kits are only cheap if they are produced in large quantities, so they have to be exported. A manufacturer in the US would have three disadvantages: a location with very high production costs (e.g. there is no chemical industry to speak of to produce the plastic), no free trade agreements but tariffs everywhere, and a shrinking market in the US due to the demographics of US modelers. And if modelling gets more expensive in the US, the market will shrink even more.