That last tariff post sparked an interesting comment thread so I thought it would be appropriate to throw in my $.02 on the subject.
For those who may not know, I own an HVAC distributor, which is a subset of industrial distribution.
Almost all residential and light commercial HVAC products sold in the USA are touched by Mexico (if not made there entirely), and all are touched by other countries. No vendor in the space will be immune.
So far I have a bunch of letters from a bunch of vendors saying “hey man, we might have to do something about this” blah blah. I had one vendor that announced a price increase since a lot of their stuff is made in China, but they called me on Friday and said “nah”. One vendor gave me a “tariff surcharge” three weeks ago. I called them up and gave them the riot act and they removed it (since none of the tariffs had even taken effect).
Speaking of surcharges, we won’t accept them. We must have a general price increase to keep our costing and accounting in order.
I imagine most of the rest of the industrial distribution world will be facing these same issues.
We will have a mix of responses from our vendors. Some manufacturers will absorb part of it, some all, some none, etc. I’m expecting some supply chain issues as I imagine some manufacturers will “slow walk” production outside of the US if they sense a solution to the tariffs will be coming.
This is about the last thing my industry needed after covid, the onset of A2L refrigerants, and industry consolidation. But as always with any type of disruption, I look at this as an opportunity. But more hard work ahead.
