I Smell Duty…

This blog post is sponsored by a gift pack of Jura scotch, gifted to me from me for writing this.

Fuck Trump and every fucking idiot that voted for him

Thanks for being here, everyone…

Before I launch into the details of how the current chaos world order is effecting my little business, I need to give a few caveats. I am one person, an American lady living and working in the European Union, and obviously cannot speak for all. How I have built and structured my business is very nuanced and is/ was heavily dependent on favourable trade relationships between the US and EU. Despite physically producing in the EU, as I grew my business it was the path of least resistance to look for retail partners in the US. The consumer culture is much greater than Germany and incomes are generally higher, in addition to the obvious ease of conducting business in my mother tongue. I am not trying to slander my homeland, this is economic fact and not rhetoric. My politics are generally far left of liberal. Just feel like I should throw that one in if it isn’t obvious. I am also not doing a deep dive of research for this, I am sure I will slip a decimal point or confuse some dates.

My business runs on a variety of revenue streams. It is a mix of wholesale/ consignment to retail parters in the US, direct to consumer via my website and Volksluxus in Berlin, commissions which are mostly direct with clients but some come through stores, and teaching workshops. European direct to consumer and commissions and teaching is unaffected.

Important terminology:
Tariffs are an import tax on goods based on the country of origin.
Duty is an import tax on goods based on the category of goods.

Before Times
In the halcyon days of not 2025, the import duty for silver jewelry into the US averaged around 6% and gold around 7%. Add in import processing fees, it was around 10%. However, the US had (will have until August 29th) a $800 de minimus duty free exemption. This meant that any packages with values under $800 did not require formal customs clearance and did not require any import duty to be paid. For better or worse, I am not producing huge amounts of solid gold pieces. So, for the most part, orders sold directly to clients (love you all!) were in the clear. Smaller restocks, and primarily silver restocks, to my retail partners were also in the clear. Larger value orders would be sent with import duty to be charged to my Fedex account. This did not change the end prices of the jewelry in these shipments, nor was I “paying” the duty. All of my wholesale pricing has a few percentage points built in to cover that import duty will have to be paid some of the time. Give or take, 3-4% across all products. So, you, the gentle reader and end purchaser of my jewelry, has already been paying towards import duty.

Now Times
The EU now faces a 15% import tariff across the board, in addition to the 6% import duty on jewelry that already existed. This combined plus import processing fees puts the total additional cost for a shipment around 26-27%. Chat GPT computed it at closer to 30%, but the sources were Reddit articles so I will just leave that on the table.

In theory, it could have been possible to continue on with a marginal price increase. Averaging this across all shipments would still have kept my head above the water and pricing at a manageable point, but.

The End of God’s Loophole
Please no Googling, the first person to correctly get this reference will receive a pair of silver F— Studs in the mail. If you can’t make jokes while your small business is potentially being dismantled by a demagogic orange autocrat, when can you? Hahaha everything is fine.

Unfortunately for so so many small businesses on both sides of the Atlantic (everywhere), the $800 de minimus exemption is going away August 29th. This was not slated to happen until July 2027, which would have given all of us time to prepare and maybe even make a plan. What this means is that every package entering the US, regardless of value, will be subject to import duty. My personal hope is that the US system will be completely overwhelmed by 4,000,000 packages a day requiring formal customs clearance, (I did a wee bit of research for this) and the exemption will come back. Even if it does, it most likely will be temporary until Customs and Border Protection can put the systems in place for the processing and billing of all incoming shipments.

Although I personally believe that all of us creating handmade anything should probably be charging more than we actually do, I also do not think my jewelry can take a 27% price increase on top of regular inflation, record gold prices, record silver prices, increased shipping costs, and everything else below the tip of the iceberg that goes into production but no one ever sees. Not to mention that actual necessities are going to be going up in price in the US.

What Happens Now?
This is a really great question. I would really rather talk about nearly any other subject. However, this is the plan for the next month…

For the immediate future, you can still browse my wares at Atomic Garden Oakland, Poet and/the Bench, and Homebody Boutique. I would highly encourage you to go to these stores in general, they are all owned by lovely people and also have lots of other great stuff that I didn’t make. Prices remain the same, however you can no longer place orders thru them for customs or anything in different sizes, etc.

All orders and customs that come thru my website to the US will be shipped with duty + tariffs paid, allowing for a regular seamless delivery. Prices remain unchanged for the time being. In this case, I, the manufacturer, am indeed paying the duty + tariffs. Once there is more clarity on things, my pricing structure will probably change.

And Then What Happens?
I want to see what actually sticks as far as the duty free exemption goes. The trade deal with the EU seems pretty locked in… signed and sealed. I am not going to start making large proclamations about the future of my business yet. This will come mid September when we actually know what is lasting and what is fleeting.

This is definitely not just going to go away, and it could be possible that I do limited drops to my retail partners in the future, it could be that I become a direct to consumer brand and you can’t browse the wares anywhere in the US in person anymore (or for at least the next 3 years), or a few other “maybe’s”.

Let’s Go a Little Emo
This last option pains me the most, jewelry is a very tactile thing. It is something, especially above a certain price point, that you want to touch and feel and see how it works on you. It is something you want a human being telling you the story of how it was made and where it comes from and who made it, and not just reading the words about the provenance on a screen and hoping its true, especially from 9 time zones away. I have lots more to ruminate on that, but think that will come when I know which direction I am actually going.

As always, reach out with any questions, thoughts, ideas, etc. And support small business in general, especially right now. Everyone is getting fucked and we don’t have the margins to ride it out the way Amazon or Walmart may.

Stay Awesome!

XoXo,

Anna