US Tariffs Announced For China Video Surveillance

Does anyone have Jeffrey He's home address? I'd like to send him a sympathy card, some TUMS, and some anti-stress medication.

I like trumps policies for the most part but his tariff strategy is dumb in my opinion. What is his ultimate goal that he hopes to see come out of this other than simply pissing off China. I can see why he would want to piss off China but why make the consumer suffer by paying higher prices? I doubt this would spark US manufacturing growth, and if it did, it would take many years.

I am hoping its just one of his temporary muscle flexing negotiating manuvers. I guess it could be much worse. Could be 25%. 

I believe his focus is in eliminating tariffs in both directions and eliminating trade restrictions designed to protect markets from external suppliers.  

China has rules of engagement about foreign entities that make entering some markets near impossible.

To manage the soy tariffs they are awarding farmers additional subsidies to grow soy.  The US may increase its subsidies to its farmers to reduce this tariff impact as well.  Both sides lose at the government level, not the farmers.

One thing for sure, the world is focused on tariffs now and restrictive trade techniques.  Every government will have to evaluate its positions.  

Who would have thought 25 years ago the US would lead in oil exports?

History has a way of repeating itself.

40 years ago it was Japanese junk that was flooding our markets.

Over time Japanese products became high quality. (Fujitsu, Nakamichi, Sony).

Next was Korea. Remember Lucky Goldstar junk VCRs, CD players, and TVs?

back then a Hyundai was a piece of junk.

Lucky Goldstar is now LG and Hyundai has become a top tier manufacturer now built in the US.

Who knows how this will shake out. Just food for thought.

I hear Hikvision wants to move their factories to India or Vietnam. I guess if Made in India/Vietnam even though parent company is China, can you dodge this tariff?

Well not exactly true, in my old china factory I use to build 250K devices a month and there was only one time per device a human touched it. This was 2001 and I am sure things are even more sophisticated today.

no but there isn't much in there that I think would make it hard to automate including lens adjustment. We use it have to build and microwave oscillator which ain't easy

Back in 2013, I've toured an assembly factory in S Korea who assembles CCTV cameras. My friend in the industry, who imports OEM Hikvision, visited their factory in China back in 2015.

Unless Hikvision radically revamped their assembly line in the past 3 years, I can tell you that all CCTV cameras are hand assembled.

Yes, it's pretty simple. Mount the lens into the main PCB board. Mount the board into the housing. Power up the camera and focus the lens using a focus chart, finally package into the box.

These are all done by humans, no robots. Not that this cannot done by robots, it might be return on investments issue.

On a side note, our industry is small compared to Consumer Electronics. I have many industry friends in S Korea. Samsung sold their security division to Hanwha, LG never had a real security products. According to Samsung/LG, the pie is too small, they would rather invest their R&D into LED Television and Smartphones.

I still remember chuckling over a statement made by Samsung Sales Director. This was like 10 years ago. At the time, I believe that Samsung Security Sales Revenue was like 22 million annually. Well, Samsung Consumer Division did 22 million in 1 day at Black Friday. 

From what I hear, Hik has already added 10% to their products, anyone here confirm?

Interesting new WSJ article, most notably because it talks about 2 techniques that are relevant to video surveillance as well:

(1) Buy now - "Retailers have a tough choice—order early to beat the penalties, which the White House says won’t take effect for at least two months, and run the risk of ending up with excess inventory. Or they can wait and risk paying the higher costs if the tariffs do go through."

(2) Switch suppliers outside of China - "Many companies have tried to tamp down anxiety by saying they have been reducing their exposure to China anyway."

The WSJ article does emphasize that switching out of China quickly is hard to do. However, the longer the 'trade war' lasts and the worse companies fear it will get, the more shifting to non-Chinese suppliers will occur.

Competing with state run, or partly state run corporations is challenging, to say the least. Governments can pour money into a business for long time, the respective product will simply take out the competition - due to hefty discounts offered. When competition is out, prices are being brought back to reality and the real profit kicks in.