Will Tariffs affect the values of new and used boats

[Lanrac62]

Not trying to pose a political question but many boats are made outside of the USA including parts/engines used in boats like Ranger and Cutwater. My outboard is a Yamaha engine, not sure if it was built in Japan or the USA (2023 R-25)

The second question is how tariffs may cause new boats to increase in price due to foreign-made parts.

Boats like Jeanneau (made in France) will have a 10% tariff added to their already high pricing.

Please refrain from politics in your answer.

Thanks

 

[Submariner]

Fluid motion imports some parts. Some of their stainless bars come from Bolton Stainless in Canada which is affected by tariffs, as an example. So it's possible, if the tariffs remain in place longer than their inventory lasts, that prices might go up. From 2020, when we purchased our boat, to today, prices have gone up significantly, without tariffs, most likely due to inflation.

Moral the story, buy the boat today, they aren't getting less expensive as time goes on.

As for the prices of used boats, they appear to be holding their value.

 

[SJI Sailor]

We could expect prices to go up proportionally to the degree that imported parts are used. There are many when we start listing them. Garmin components come to mind (Taiwan, last I read) in addition to many other components.

OTOH manufacturers will also try to substitute, use inventory on hand while waiting for changes, discount where possible, and continue to adapt to other market forces (e.g. sales are down since the COVID peak). Plus whatever general inflation does.

So I'm sure it is overall impossible to estimate very well. For my 0.02, I can imagine and would personally expect a 5-10% net effect in the coming year but that's admittedly just a wild guess.

That is my SWAG of "10% or higher tariffs on imported things, which is some variable fraction of the boat, plus a small bit of inflation, plus buffer for manufacturer to protect vs uncertainty, minus manufacturing optimizations, minus market incentives ." Not very informative, I suppose!

 

[venajeff]

I think something that many people overlook is that if own a US company that competes with foreign goods, when the price of foreign goods increases that allows you to increase your prices as well. You may not increase them by as much, so that you can increase sales, but you will undoubtedly increase your prices. I am not passing any judgement. Business is business, companies charge what the customer will pay.
All of this is on top of an historic level of baseline inflation.
So that being said. I would expect to see a minimum of a 10% increase across the board in the next 12 months. On the higher end we could see a 25% increase.
The bigger issue that I can see is that one of the only (definitely most effective) tools that a government has to control inflation is raising interest rates. So I believe that these higher rates will have a major impact on the boating market. Both from boat loans and the ability to use your home as equity to purchase a boat.

 

[SJI Sailor]

I just read this report from economists at Yale. They estimate the impact of tariffs on various product categories in both short and long term.
https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/fiscal-and-economic-effects-revised-april-9-tariffs

There is not a category for "boats" but there are categories for motor vehicles, electronics, manufacturing items, etc.

Across several of those most related to boats, they estimate long term impacts in the range of about 8-18% increase. If we say 13% +/- 5% (before also adding inflation) then it's hand wavingly close to venajeff's estimate in the previous post.