What a shock! One more piece added to the debacle. You know what's happening/happened. CDC recommends no covid shots for kids, and the insurance companies cover what they say. So parents will have to pay out of pocket. Most of the current in general are idiots.

Our purchasing options have always been limited in the US, and the current stupidity just makes it all worse. A few weeks ago I received a beautiful Gt 2x 4/4 (37961) from a shop in Holland. They were great to work with, had reasonable prices and shipped to the US. I guess that option is now closed to me as well.

I just received an email from Walter Menzel at Euro Rail Hobbies today about how this change is going to affect another long time dealer, limit my choices and raise my prices. If there was a reason behind this it would easier, but it just seems to be random and pointless.

They are trying to find a way to get the sender to pay the tariffs (fees must be paid prior to shipment) so that the administration can claim that the "countries" are paying the tariffs and not the US customer.
In Canada, parcels arrive at your door with invoice for duties, taxes and a postal handling (brokerage) fee included. This is how the tariffs should properly be applied in America, but these games that are being played are messing with everybody.
Shippers are simply going to refuse to serve US clients and Canadians (and others) may be caught up in this as shippers simply refuse to ship outside the EU.

Even if the sender pays the tariffs in advance, who collects it and who remits it to the US government? The end result will still be that the US customer sees those amounts added to their invoice.

Regards

Mike C

Looking at our hobby in the USA it must be difficult at present. However in three years I presume your government will change and things will go back to normal.
Meanwhile even if in a small way supporting a local hobby shop might help to keep them in business.

I received my Insider dump car sets but I have not yet gotten my Class E 95 locomotive or the baggage car. My dealer maintained the order price on the cars, but I wonder when I will get the rest and what they will cost.

Maybe it is time to take a break from buying trains until David's prediction comes true and the US goes back to being a normal country again.

Annoying as it is, getting train shipments into the country is now way down on the list of important things for US residents. IMHO

Swiss Post has announced that it too will cease shipments to the United States as of Tuesday, August 26, 2025.
The easiest solution would be for US Post to set up a customs operation similar to the one in Canada, where the post office would handle the assessment of duty, taxes and tariffs of incoming parcels.
The problem with this is that the Post Office would then have to collect from the person at delivery.
By insisting that all tariffs, duties and tax be paid by the shipper, to make it appear that "the other country" is paying the tariffs, they will cut off a lot of small shipments

Regards

Mike C

I would think that Marklin would need to ship Canadian items directly to Canada to avoid all of the tariffs. I hope that you don't get caught up in our mess.

The convoluted way this is playing out is primarily to try to hide these taxes from US consumers. Unfortunately some people seem to actually be falling for it and believe that the tariff money is somehow falling out of the sky, instead of out of their wallets.

In conversations with Canadian dealers, I was told that Maerklin has no plans to alter the setup where Canadian dealers place their orders through Marklin USA. Unfortunately, this would mean that items sold by Marklin USA to Canadian dealers would have the tariffs included in the price. From what I can tell, there is no mechanism for getting a tariff credit for goods reexported from the United States. I was told that Maerklin had no intent to ship to Canadian dealers directly.

My conversations with people at Maerklin hinted that the company is examining their options as the US operation was also handling goods ordered by dealers in Central and South America and they were looking at their options.
I considered the possibility of setting up a company in Europe which could receive orders destined to Canada (through the Marklin USA network) and ship them directly to Canada, bypassing entry and reexport from USA.
To make such a service viable, I would have to charge a fee, which would likely be similar to a 15% tariff, so I abandoned the project as not viable.

I hope that Maerklin and others decide to ship to Canada directly and it may be in their interest to find a location where they could receive the goods without tariffs and then only goods shipped into the USA would be subject to tariffs.
Montreal is 100Km from the border. Cornwall, Niagara Falls and Windsor Ontario are right on the border. Montreal's advantage is that there is a point of entry (harbour/airport) that is used by the main shippers for goods into Canada. Other cities would require goods to be shipped from the point of arrival to the warehouse.

Regards

Mike C

There seems a trend :

Deaf ears, definitely.

It appears that the USA want the tariff to be paid by the purchaser in another country and then sent to the USA. Very clever as it means the USA people are not paying the tariffs.
Maybe time for the EU China and others to just stop sending anything to the USA and although it would hit their business the USA would be left on its own with no overseas goods and would have major problems and would soon change this situation which frankly is stupid. Anyway we are interested in model trains and in the short term the secondhand market in the USA might do well and members on here could sell models they dont use to others who would be interestd in buying. It is a shame for our members in the USA and Canada but perhaps just wait it out for a few years when the government will change and arrange a proper system in particular for small purchases.

Even if the shipper/manufacturer collects the tariffs in advance to make it appear that the "other countries" are paying the tariffs, that amount and any additional costs will be passed on to the end customer, so in the end, it is the American customer who pays the bill.
The most frustrating part of it IMHO is for the Canadian, Mexican or other whose country orders through a US distributor, that we too will have to pay these additional costs even though the end destination of the goods is not the US of A.

I fear that many of the dealers, many who were already hesitant about shipping outside Germany or the EU, will decide that the easiest option is to stop international shipping rather than find a solution for US shipments only.

Regards

Mike C