[0:22] Hello, everyone. I'm Jonathan. I'm Crystal. And this is Haunt Weekly,

[0:27] a weekly podcast for the own attraction and entertainment community. Whether you're an actor, owner, or just plain aficionado, we aim to be a podcast for you. And this week, we are super late.

[0:37] I'm not going to lie. We are super late, but we have a legit reason. We have done probably three times more research into this topic than the average Haunt Weekly episode easily. Right. And we weren't even going to talk about this but it's the only thing that's been on my mind for a few weeks yeah and we've had lots of conversations around the house and that's kind of one of the problems we have with the show is like people are always like oh where do you get your topic ideas from where do you get your topic ideas from um usually it's the bullshit we're talking about anyway yeah and we just go we'll record this later yeah yeah exactly it's it's usually that's what happens and so we We jump. Whatever just pops into our stupid little brains we talk about. Yeah, and if it's stuck in there, then we've got to write it out. You've got to write it out. It's like that earworm, man. You get it in your head, and you just got to go listen to the fucking song a few dozen times. Exactly. That's what this has been like. So, yes, indeed, we will be talking about how tariffs may impact the haunted attraction industry. If that does not sound like an episode you want to hear, I completely understand. Yeah, there's not a lot of spoons to go around right now. So please, if you don't want to hear about this, totally understand, check out all the places we exist, HauntWeekly.com, HauntWeekly on Facebook, YouTube.com slash HauntWeekly, and anywhere else you get your podcasts from, we exist in most of the places that will have us.

[2:02] Please go check us out especially the youtube channel has pretty much every episode we've done minus one um every episode we've ever done and yeah basically uh go check it out there listen to something else there's plenty of happier ones there yeah um so doing our usual housekeeping stuff once again we're late we're sorry um research on this took forever and it was bad for both of us because first you went down the rabbit hole. Yeah. And then I decided, oh, I know what my contribution can be. And I went down a completely different fucking rabbit hole. Exactly. And then you went down a different, different one just earlier today. So we just decided we're going to throw dynamite down the rabbit holes and record the episode. Yeah. Because we don't have a choice now. As for work we did on the haunt, we haven't done any. I am still injured. And Sunday I wasn't feeling well. Yeah. It turns out what happened with my arm injury, it seems like, was I have naturally loose shoulders.

[3:08] They've dislocated themselves all the time, all my life, never been an issue. But my right arm dislocated while I was carrying something heavy, namely a 12-pack of sodas, and it caused a bicep tear. Yeah. And so my bicep looks horrible right now. It looks terrifyingly bruised. Luckily, I'm not in any real pain. I just can't carry anything heavier than like a couple cans of Coke right now. So I definitely should not be doing anything with power tools, heavy lifting, etc. For at least a few more weeks. So just assume this is the hot work update for the next little bit. Yeah.

[3:43] All right. Well, every week we do ask a question of the week. And last week's question of the week tagging on with our episode is, is your haunt actually haunted? And if so, or if not, do you promote it as such? Tyler Robinson said, I do a home haunt called Dr. Neville Stone's Graveyard House of Terror for Halloween. The place is pretty old where I do it and at, but haven't really experienced anything while running the haunt for Halloween. But when I'm not doing it, sometimes I'll experience some strange things because the place is pretty old. Yeah, we said earlier that actually going through a haunted attraction would be the worst time to theoretically see some ghost. Yeah. Like every ghost story you hear about, I was alone in the place and then I felt a presence. Yeah. And that's the antithesis of a haunted attraction. Yeah. Sorry, what were we saying? Okay. Jeremy Becks says, I'm not a haunt owner. I'm not an owner of a haunt, sorry, but the haunt I work for is haunted. And no, it's not promoted. I've run into this ghost twice. The first night of my clown character, I felt a presence in front of me. I didn't see it. I felt the tip of my nose being pushed in. And two years ago, I was at the bar picking up merchandise. We have a bar on site, but I don't drink. I felt a finger run down my back, but nobody was behind me. Sounds like you got a kind of weird ghost, dude. Yeah. I mean, it's not like that's like the wrong kind of creepy.

[5:13] It sounds like they might have a thing for clowns. Sam Farrell said... Change of character! Change of character!

[5:20] Sam Farrell said, If only, although I guess you could use the weather forecast tactic and say there's a 50-50 chance that you'll see a ghost. I mean, you won't be... you wouldn't be wrong. Fair play. Fair play to you. Sabra Pretty said, Ours is, but we don't promote it as such. but I'm also a paranormal investigator as well as an actor. I've done many nights there and caught some amazing evidence as well. Three ghost emoji. That's what I found interesting. Okay, one more. Sorry. And then Greg Packard said nope and nope and wink. And a winky face. So what I find interesting in this is that the haunts that believe it to be haunted they don't advertise it as such.

[6:04] I just find that interesting. It is. um because that's something that we delved into was like would people who actually believe want that yeah you know wanted to advertise as such and apparently from our minuscule survey the answer is no and very unscientific survey too well yeah i mean minuscule is not the problem it's the lack of any randomness to it oh yeah i know it's a serious problem but yeah but still Well, it is interesting, and I do understand that logic, too. So this week's question of the week, which ties into our topic, is are you planning on stocking up on anything before prices rise, or prices, I should say, likely rise in the coming months? Let us know, HauntWeekly.com, HauntWeekly on Facebook, and YouTube.com slash HauntWeekly. All right, well, this is an episode of Visible by Two. That means it's time to do conference reminders, folks, and we've updated the list, and we've got some shows coming up. Let me start off or do you want to i'll go ahead well coming up february 27th it's trans world's halloween attraction show you know all the details already you don't even tell you it's in st louis missouri the american center featuring seminars a massive trade show floor and much more co-hosted with the christmas show which i do recommend checking out there is some awesome stuff on the other side of the trade show floor a big party at city museum ha show h-a-a-s-h-o-w.com for more information.

[7:34] April 4th through the 6th, it's April Ghouls in Athens, Georgia, at the Southern Brewing, Haunted Trail, Bands, Vendors, and more. And you can find out more at HauntFest.net. All right. Then April 24th through the 27th, it's the East Coast Haunters Convention in Oaks, Pennsylvania, at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center. Um, oddly enough, I checked it literally just yesterday. Info is still pending. It is also paired with the East Coast Christmas Show. Get your details whenever they decide to post them at eastcoashownersconvention.com. April 25th through the 27th at Spooky Swap Meet at Los Angeles, California Heritage Square Museum. Great place to purchase gently loved items, including costumes and decor, created by co-founders of Midsummer Scream.

[8:36] Spookyswapmeat.com for more info. All right. And even though I didn't highlight it, I do want to talk about it. The Halfway to Halloween Expo is May 10th in Ann Arbor, Michigan at the Washtenaw Farm Council Ground. It will feature her show food trucks, but the reason I want to get the word out about it a little bit early is because they are doing a local haunted house collab. They're wanting to get all the pro haunters and all the home haunters together to collaborate on one project for this show. So, if that sounds interesting to you and you're in that area, Yeah. Sign up. Go to halfwaytohalloweenmichigan.com Yeah, I just wanted to get the word about that early because that just sounds awesome. Yeah. And we had to have something happy. So, speaking of that, Yeah, this is going to be a heavy episode. And look, we're like everyone else in the world right now. We're burned out on this shit. Mm-hmm. I mean, Ellie pointed out, we're only in month one.

[9:37] And we all went, we're five days into two. Well, no, remember he took office. Never mind. Never mind. Never mind. I know. But anyways, yeah. So this is going to be a heavy episode. However, even though you guys definitely know our politics, we definitely know where we come from, and know we probably aren't very happy with the way things are going right now. Make it clear that we want to keep this politically dispassionate and talk about the practical impacts about tariffs slash duties on goods, especially from Canada and Mexico, which is, when we started talking about this, was the front burner issue. Right, and China. Yeah, and China, too. Yeah. But, yes. So, with that note, a few disclaimers. First, we are not experts at this. No, we've had a few hours each of research. Rabbit-holing.

[10:33] A couple of videos. Yeah, and we have some experience with it through Ellie's Yarn Store. Yeah. We've had to deal with international shipping because if you want to buy any kind of bulk yarn, you have to get it from Turkea, Turkey. And so we've had a fair amount of experience in importing yarn, but admittedly not the stuff we're talking about here. Second, it's almost impossible to predict actual outcomes. Global economics is really complicated, and this is like a giant game of mousetrap. Yeah. We're turning the crank to snap the plank, but who knows where it goes from there. So we can't, we clearly can't predict any outcome with a certainty.

[11:15] And finally, even if we could, not everyone's going to feel the same impacts. Where you live, what you specifically need, how much of it you need will all play roles. And it will change from haunt to haunt, person to person, situation to situation. Yeah. So if this sounds like we're trying to keep it 10,000 feet, we probably are. Yeah. We don't want to get too deep into the weeds. Yeah. And predict like anything too specific. No. So, yeah. All right. Well, right now, the tariffs are delayed, save the one on China.

[11:50] However, they have real repercussions for our industry. And maybe some, like, we'll get into a lot of them, but it's probably not all of them because we can't think of all the ways that this is going to affect the industry. Yeah, and that's one of the other problems. I guess that would end point four above is I'm pretty sure we're not thinking of everything. No. I'm 100% sure we're not thinking of everything. There's going to be tons here that we can't predict and can't see coming. So real fast, I'm going to put the links in the description, but we have an article here from CNN that basically explains the potential impacts from tariffs. It's a good read. It has some good data on it. And this was written before the tariffs were postponed, as was much of this podcast. Right. Right, and a lot of the other information and facts that are in here were from general sources. Yeah, I pulled a lot of things from like trade.gov and various other sites that covered more broadly. Yeah. And in fact, my main rabbit hole was our past here, namely Ellie's terror situation.

[13:02] Now, we talked about Ellie's Yarn Store multiple times on the show. Our girlfriend opened a yarn store two and a half-ish years. No, a little bit over two years ago now. Yeah. And one of the things that came with this was a big crash course on bulk international shipping for retail purpose. Right. And it was a very ugly crash course, too, to be honest with you. It didn't go very well. No. I mean, and that's putting it quite mildly. And the reason, like we said, is that most, nearly all the yarn we can find is made in Terkeia and is shipped usually either via FedEx or DHL to go to stores. And this is true of most yarn you get at yarn stores.

[13:46] Yeah, there are very few, if any, American-produced yarn for bulk sale. You'll find local dyers and local small batch producers. Right. But, yeah, as far as, like, retail warehouse quantity of stuff, you really do need to go outside the U.S. Yeah. That is an industry that does not exist here, and I don't think realistically can exist here. Mm-hmm. But, yeah, this, so I decided for my contribution into this, I would try to figure out what Ellie pays in tariffs. Mm-hmm. And I thought this was going to be real easy. I thought I was going to get an invoice, and I was going to take a look at it and be able to get the percentage and figure it out. And bish, bish, bash, bosh, I've done, I helped. It's shake and bake and I help, baby, right? What preceded was my rabbit hole from hell? Yeah. This turned out to be way, way, way harder than I thought. Because, A, different yarns are tariff differently. Yeah. This was one of the hardest lessons because the amount of animal fiber, the percentage of animal fiber, changes the tariff. as does the amount you buy. If you buy under a certain amount, even if it's for retail, it's going to be tariff differently or not at all in some cases compared to when you make a larger order.

[15:05] Now, typically, Ellie does get hit with tariffs because she's buying thousands of dollars at a time. Right. And there is an amount that you can stay underneath and not have to pay that.

[15:17] But, yeah. But assuming you go over that amount, which for a retail space you probably are. Yeah. I turned to some online calculators. Once again, Trade.gov and a few other places had them. and looking at the invoices and making my best guesses, I found that it was about 6%. All the data converges on that point. It's the best guess I can get. That amounts to about a $300 tariff on a $5,000 order. That is not a lot, admittedly. That's a pretty low tariff. And given the resale value of this yarn, the bulk versus retail price of this yarn, It's easily absorbed in. And that's the current. Yeah, that's the current. There have been no mentions of tariffs on Turkey yet. Turkey is not in the EU yet. Right. I don't think they are. Someone might have looked that one up. But... Regardless, obviously, if things change, that could go up very quickly. But here's the thing. That's not the only part of the fee.

[16:23] First, there are transaction costs. You have to pay someone to pay the tariff cost. And the way FedEx does it is they have in-house people who do it. So basically, you're paying FedEx to pay your bill. Think of it as the credit card charge. Right. And if you have a choice to go between FedEx and DHL, FedEx has been the best for her for international shipping. Yeah, way, way better than DHL. Now, granted, I know people that have had good relationships with DHL. Yeah.

[16:57] But FedEx has just been so much smoother, so much faster. And DHL, because of sheer stupidity, ended up holding up one of her shipments for like six months. They wanted her to pay this instead of putting it into their price of shipping. Yeah, and basically, you're going to get a middle person somewhere. Yeah. And the other truth is, if you don't have a middle person, you're probably going to want one. Mm-hmm. I mean, while everyone knows that import-export business is the shadiest business you can get into. Yeah. That may be legitimate. it's kind of important because navigating the chaos that is customs kind of has to be somebody's job yeah i mean it just kind of is so you have the transaction cost and you have other costs associated with it um and one one of the other advantages ellie had with fedex was she set up an account with them she was required to put a certain amount into that account to pay tariffs and to handle like this, and she still has to pay invoices and things. But she got an account with them set up, so she had to put money up front to have this. Right, and that made FedEx her middleman so that she didn't have to deal with it or think about it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[18:14] So, basically, that was part of the expense and the time. And as you noted, as we talked about, the payment of these tariffs have also resulted in significant delays.

[18:24] So, when you factor in time, you factor in all the other expenses, it's more than 6%. In fact, typically speaking, on a $5,000 order, her tariffs or fees, or I'm sorry, her import fees total come closer to $400. Yeah.

[18:46] Now, Hank Green did a great video. You wanted to talk about this. Yeah, I put it in here because this is a good Trump kind of video.

[18:55] So yeah, Hank Green did a video on his YouTube channel called How Trump and Obama Created Sheen Together. And it's about how they raised the price of the minimum amount needed to get a tariff to high enough that Sheen or Sheen or Temu or Temu or whatever can ship almost anything to you tariff free.

[19:17] Exactly. And so that made it a lot cheaper for people to buy things individually and get them imported than to have them shipped to the United States and warehoused here. Exactly. And he talked about, you know, how he's had trouble with this because he tried to import a bunch of carrot suits, carrot jump suits, and they didn't have the tag on them appropriately, so Customs held them until he could hire a company to go to the warehouse and put tags on, it was like a thousand carrot suits, something like that. It was insane. And I also talked about, you know, how you were talking about how different yarns are tariffed differently. Well, shirts are too. If the pocket is on the left versus the right side, it's tariff differently yeah that's stupid it is but then again so is i'm tariffing 25 percent of everything from a country flatly oh yeah that's equally stupid yeah it's like one system is too complicated and this is a extreme over correction yeah i think it's a safe way to put it right Like, it's like, God. But anyways, so yeah, we've had a lot of wrestling matches with tariffs.

[20:34] And it has been a big hassle on our end. And the main thing I wanted to get across with this is that it's not just a flat X percent. It takes more time. It has more expense. Creates more headaches. It's a lot of layers. No matter what you do going through customs, if you're doing enough for, if you're doing retail stuff, you're going to pay some kind of fee. And that's even if there is no tariffs. Ellie has had some orders that went below that number. Right. And so she didn't have to pay the duty or the tariff. And that slid under the radar. Notice you just interchanged those. Yeah, because the trade department says I can't. I know. So, God damn it, I'm going to do it. It's my right now because that pissed me off. I spent an hour trying to figure out the difference between a duty and a tariff was. And the trade department's like, eh, we just use them interchangeably. Yeah. Well, fuck you too then. Exactly. But regardless, you will always pay something on this type of retail purchase. But tariffs raise that cost both in time and money to a whole new level. Basically, the amount she paid on those smaller orders could be called a rounding error.

[21:44] It was significantly less than the sales tax. Yeah. You know, for example, than any sales tax would have been. So, you know, there's that. But anyways, so when we started talking about this episode. Yeah. One of the first approaches you took was trying to find haunt companies that are based in either Canada or Mexico and that might be shipping to the United States. And there weren't very many. There are some. Yeah, they exist. But I decided to zoom out and take a broader look. Because that really isn't the issue. No. At the end of the day. Right. It's the materials that we all use to create these spaces. Like lumber. Oh yep we're talking about lumber again folks pack it up leave.

[22:33] Oh shit they're all about lumber again yeah turn off the podcast saw what happened during the pandemic with lumber prices um and you know this is the one this is our answer by the way to the question of the week yeah we are planning this weekend to go and buy the lumber that we need for next year to finish out our build because luckily we don't need much no because the attitude i have right now is the price of lumber is not at the lowest it's been recently but it's at toward the bottom and it can't drop too much lower so if these tariffs never come into effect and the price of lumber craters it's not going to be so much cheaper we feel stupid buying early right but It has a lot of room to go up So it's like the risk of it coming down is pretty small the risk of it going up is limitless No, so we're gonna buy a, We're going to buy two-by-fours, plywood, anything else that we think, maybe some more fence boards, things that we think we need. And luckily, like I said, we don't have to buy much. Right. Just a few, maybe like six sheets of plywood, some two-by-fours. But we're going to get it and probably buy enough to put it on the Home Depot card, too, because seriously.

[23:53] Yeah. Yeah, but. Anyways, moving on. The top importers of wood to the U.S. Are Canada, Mexico, China. Hmm. Those three sound familiar, Brazil and Germany. And right now, the price of two by fours is $3.48 at Home Depot. We will be checking back with that price in a few months to see how that changes. And 30% of all U.S. Imported wood comes from Canada. And one of the things to think about is, okay, well, obviously, if you're closer to Canada, you're using more Canadian wood. Yeah. It's kind of like how if you try to find actual honest-to-God maple syrup, good luck in New Orleans. Yeah. Because we're all the way to fuck down here. We're as far away from Canada as you can get in North America, pretty much, unless you go to Florida. So we don't get a lot of real maple syrup here. And when we do, it's stupid, expensive, so no one buys it. We just buy, you know, we use molasses. We use the fake shit. We use whatever. We use different stuff. We use cane syrup. Yeah, we use cane syrup a lot here. That's kind of a local tradition, honestly. It is. But regardless, you won't find maple syrup here for the same reason you're not likely to find Canadian wood here. It's too goddamn far.

[25:07] But let's say you are a lumberyard in St. Louis. Now, normally you get half of your wood from Canada by this tariff raise the cost from it. Well, now you're buying lumber from lumberyards in Louisiana to supplement. Wood's going to get shuffled around within the United States. And so, no matter where you are, wood is going to go up in price. Yeah, and the other thing to think about is, I don't know, but it seems like it would be, if prices on imports are going up, prices on local wood available would also go up. Yeah, because... Because they can. Because they can. Now they have less competition from, you know, or the competition just became significantly more expensive. Yeah, because you could raise your prices and still come in underneath imported wood prices. Yeah, you can add literally 25% to your price and be under what, you know, any Canadian providers want to be able to offer because that, like I said, like we just said, that 25% is the start. Yeah. That's the beginning of the problem.

[26:18] Um, so basically, you know, if you're not used to dealing with tariffs, this is going to be hell. Yeah. Um, and so, yeah, lumber is for the haunt industry. I think lumber may be the biggest risk. We saw what happened with lumber during the pandemic, as you said, when lumber prices skyrocketed due to supply chain interruptions and increased demand at the same time. Yeah, because a lot of people were building shit at home. And we had several disasters that year, natural disasters. And COVID restrictions shut down a lot of mills, too. Exactly. So you had all these variables coming at once. Lumber prices went a million miles up. And I don't think this is going to be that bad because right now lumber demand is down from what I can see. But it does mean lumber prices are going to go up and they're going to go up significantly. And there may be supply constraints, especially in areas that depended heavily on imported lumber, either from Canada or Mexico. Yeah.

[27:19] So, honestly, like you said, we're making the run. Our plan is Saturday. We've got a 12-hour open slot of time on Saturday. We're going to go to Home Depot and rent the damn truck. Yeah. Oh, wait, we can't. I may see if I can get one of our friends to come and help us. Yeah. We made this plan before we realized my arm was not going to be useful. Yeah. Yeah, and I can haul wood around by myself. Yeah, well, God, yeah. But putting it up into the bed of the truck might be cumbersome. You can sling a plywood panel into two-by-fours just fine. I have no doubt about that.

[27:59] It does go much faster, eh? Oh, yeah. With two people. Definitely. And so, yeah, we might have to reach out to some of our actors to see if they can help. Maybe that'd be a good thing to post in the crew group. Yeah. Look at us improvising in real time as we record the podcast. Yeah, I know. Figuring it out. No, literally, we made this plan before the giant bruise showed up on my arm, and I realized that I was going to be out of action for a long time. Yeah, I realized this when we first mentioned lumber in this episode. And I'm like, crap. Shit. We will get someone else to help Crystal haul the lumber. And if we can't, we're going to get it sometime in February before the possibility of the... Because right now they're delayed for 30 days. I think that means beginning in March. Yeah. So just sometime this month would be adequate.

[28:48] But yeah, we desperately need to buy this lumber because if it goes up significantly... And here's one of the things that befuddles me. Like, we talked about the price of eggs. Now, egg prices are due to bird flu. And I've watched a video today from Costco of hoarders just grabbing all the eggs as they were put out, even though they were insanely expensive. At that point, if you want a continuous supply of eggs, buy chickens.

[29:23] As I said on Facebook, egging someone's house is now a white-collar crime. Yeah. But it's just, but yeah, but that's the other worry you have to contend with is that if prices do rise and there's any kind of indication there might be a shortage, people making a rush. Yeah. We saw it with toilet paper and COVID. Someone, and there was no shortage. No. There was no problem. There was just general panic for some reason about it. Someone somewhere said, well, we're going to need a lot of toilet paper. And then everyone went and grabbed toilet paper. We have a bidet. We didn't give a shit. literally no we gave shit so we just didn't have yeah anyway it was just craziness so i worry a little bit about something like that with lumber too yeah less likely i admit because of the nature of the material but jesus christ who the fuck knows man we're living in wild times let's move on from lumber okay and talk about electronics,

[30:21] This should not shock you, but roughly one-third of the world's electronics come from China. I know, I know. Please, please, run cold water over that scathing commentary I just gave you. Yeah.

[30:37] Correct your shocked face. I understand this was difficult. But no. So yeah, basically, if you use electronics in your haunt, And this is going to include everything from sound equipment to Raspberry Pis to LCD screens to laser trips, pressure pads, anything. Ticket scanners. Ticket scanners. Ticket printers. Jesus Christ. Security cameras. Yeah. Anything with an electronic component. It's not just the end product here. Yeah. It's anything that has an electronic component in it. Yeah. If it comes from China into the U.S. at some point, its price currently, this tariff is in effect. Yeah. And it is going up 10% BOS right there. And like we said in the first part, 10% is just the baseline. Nope. There's other expenses on top of that.

[31:33] So, yeah. Basically, it's going to impact everything electronic. Luckily, we're not planning any electronic purchases. We got our nice projector last year. The only other electronics we've been considering were, you know, things along those lines. I don't think we really need to make a jump on that. I'm not feeling the need to run out and buy a bunch of tech toys for the haunt. No, but the smart lights with the programmable chips in them might go up. That's true. Luckily, we bought extras of those last year, too. Yes, we did, because we were smart.

[32:09] Well, we were dumb, and that made us smart. We were not dumb.

[32:16] That's a story we've already told. We were fine. No, we were dumb because we didn't have extras on hand in case something happened. Yeah, okay, that's fair. That part was dumb. Yeah. But the actual death of the lights was not us. No, we have spares now. We have adequate spares. We'll be fine pretty much no matter what. And one of the things is that these tariffs are going to be hit, felt most by the companies that are importing electronics. So, think like Fright Props and companies like that that are putting electronics into things. Right. They're the ones in the haunt industry that are going to be most directly impacted as far as haunt industry companies. Now, hopefully, and almost certainly, these companies have some stock already and have some runway before the prices have to go up. That would make sense. And that would be sensical for any tech company that's based in the U.S. But as you noted, a lot of the electronics haunts used are not haunt-specific. Right. Like you said, security cameras, ticket scanners, things like that. Other industries use them just the same as we do, and they're often manufactured and assembled in China and shipped here. And those prices are going to go up due to tariffs. There's just no really ducking that.

[33:42] Yeah. There's no positive spin on this. No, there's not. And we warned you at the beginning of this, this is going to be a shit show. Yeah, it's a difficult one. And so, basically, be thinking about the electronics you use. And if you're planning any upgrades, if you're planning any big moves like that, And honestly, one other thing to think about, if you are a gamer, a PC gamer, and you're thinking about you need a new rig, this is totally aside. The new NVIDIA 5000 series has dropped. And even though those apparently are sold out, it's lower the prices and lower the 40 series cards. And between that and these tariffs getting ready to take effect, if not already taking effect, now might be the best time to buy a gaming PC. For the next... for however long this shit goes on yeah foreseeable future so that's a complete aside to my gaming homies um take that hint and run with it and i'm not the only one saying that by the way i got that point from a from actual several youtube channels that we're pointing out now it's probably the best time yeah um so other things that are going to impact us uh shipping prices are going up so if you're buying anything from anywhere because the gas that's being imported is also, we've already seen gas prices start to go up. And it's going.

[35:10] Yeah, well, go ahead, Melissa. No, it's okay. I was just saying, gas prices are so speculative in many ways, too. I know. But it was on every list that I looked at was that shipping prices are going to go up. Oh, no doubt. Yeah. No doubt. Because, and they attributed it to gas prices rising. But you also have to add the extra complexity of dealing with the tariffs. Yeah, exactly. Because the tariffs, so it's also going to take longer for you to get whatever it is.

[35:42] Because, you know, they could... Well, I mean... My brain is awfulizing now, and it's not going to a good place. Well, to give an example of the potential problem, earlier today, when we're recording this, which is that they were uploading, And the U.S. Postal Service announced and then rescinded that it was stopping all shipments from China. Yeah. It was just not going to deliver them because of the new tariffs and didn't have adequate instructions. Right. And there's already a lot of confusion about what customs is supposed to do with all of this. Yeah. Because there's been no guidance given for how to implement this. It's very similar oddly enough to how brexit was when the uk separated from the the eu um and suddenly they now had to have an actual customs border between these places nobody had any idea that was going to fucking work no and so basically it caused a lot of confusion a lot of backups now things did get better over time and things probably will get better over time as processes are in place, but do expect a high amount of chaos, at least for a few months. So, yeah, this will not be a clean application. No. It's sudden, and it's honestly not very well planned.

[37:12] So, yeah, if you fabricate anything using steel, guess what? Canada and Mexico combined...

[37:21] Send about 11 million tons of steel, which is about 40% of all the steel imported. As with lumber, even if you get your steel domestically, domestic providers are going to be able to raise their prices. They're going to take the opportunity. They're going to charge more. Yeah. You know how earlier we were talking about a haunt that has a bar in it, and lots of haunts do now? Well, beer and alcohol are also mainly, largely imported. In 2023, we imported $5.69 billion worth of beer and $4.81 billion worth of alcohol from Mexico, according to the International Trade Administration. And last year, Modelo Especial was the top-selling beer in the U.S. Yeah, Bud Light was second. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so your alcohol prices are going to have to go up in your concession stands or your bars if you have them. Yeah, or just, you know, the fact most haunts do, a lot of haunts do just genuinely run on beer. Yeah. So, I mean, where am I going to get my haunt fuel when we're doing the haunt builds?

[38:33] For doing the builds and for the after parties. Yeah, exactly. And the hangout time with the friends during the year, yeah. Yeah. Another thing you pointed out was shoes. Yeah. This one blew my mind when you put this one in. Me too.

[38:49] 99% of shoes sold in the United States are imported. That is not a fucking typo. You heard that right. Yeah. 99%. That is crazy. That includes Nike, Steve Madden, Cole Haan, other major footwear brands, all imported.

[39:09] So, wherever you get your comfy shoes for Haunting, and you should be wearing comfy shoes. Yep. Seriously, protect your feet, protect your knees, protect yourself. Mm-hmm. Get good comfy shoes. Yeah, prices on that are going to go up, too. Yeah. That's going to be a pinch. And I didn't even think of that, but yeah, shoes are vital to Haunting. Yeah. That was, and I thought, shoes, let's get some shoes. And then i read in a go no wait she's got a point she's actually onto something here yeah jesus christ i need to sit down and then comes the fun one yeah i'm talking mainly to home and charity haunts here this next one the next two um halloween costumes that you can buy at retail stores and decorations are almost all of them come from china yeah and i couldn't find an exact number on this i tried several different search terms and i couldn't find an exact number because it seems like it all comes from there except mexico is now taking a little bit of hold and is the second importer of those things well i mean go next time you go to spirit next time Spirits A, open, and B, you go.

[40:25] Spend some time in the costume area. Yeah. And check the maiden tags. Yeah, exactly. Now, I did learn that Spirit has their own animatronics maker who's been doing it for a long time in Dallas. So, those animatronics are local. Yeah, but not all the parts. Exactly. Once again, the electronics, the latex. I mean, and it's still Spirit at the end of all this. Yeah. It's called Spirit Prop. Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah, but, you know, and all of the goths are like, all of my Halloween, you know, slash home decorations, because it's home decorating season for the goths. Yeah. Those also primarily come from China. Yeah.

[41:14] Yeah. So that's going to become more expensive, too, if this continues. Also, Halloween candy. Yeah. Didn't think of this one, but over 70% of all U.S. Candy is imported from Candia and Mexico. And another 15% comes from China. So 85% comes from the three countries at Conversation today. Exactly. And 75% of all U.S. candy sales start in September and end in April. Yeah, so that covers you from Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's Day. Yep. I knew that, because that's a six-month run there, pretty much. Yeah. Yeah, but I did not realize the year was that lopsided for candy sales. Yeah, exactly. Like, I kind of figured, like, people bought candy always a baseline amount. Probably because it fucking melts in the summer. Yeah, apparently, like, no one gives me candy for my birthday in August, because I don't want candy for my birthday. Like, I have in the past. Yeah, I'm not much of a candy person. No, you like Reese's Pieces. I have Reese's Pieces and donuts. Yes. Donuts are my candy.

[42:33] So, yeah, it's going to be much, much more expensive, or could very well be more expensive for both costumes, decorations, and candy. Yeah. Which can hurt Halloween overall. Exactly. It's going to make it a lot harder for families to participate in it the way that they have done in the past. Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be, if this comes to pass, and right now as we're sitting here talking about this, the tariffs have been paused for at least a month. Who knows what's going to happen in March? Right now, that's one of the things that's so distressing is everything is so unpredictable. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, I can't exactly buy all the Halloween candy I need right now and stuff it in the freezer until October. You know we can so yeah i guess that's kind of the message from here is be thinking about this understand that it's very likely that prices on a lot of the stuff is going up yeah um.

[43:37] Once again this isn't about whether tariffs are good or bad it's just a practical on the ground reality the reason things are often priced as inexpensively as they are is because there are no tariffs on them or are very limited tariffs on them if there is right um once again looking at ellie's yarn that's six percent tariff she's able to turn it around and offer even though she's a small yarn store offer very competitive prices to you know the the big box retailers which is something typically small retailers can't do. Yeah. She's only like 50 cents to a dollar off a skein. Right. And that's one of the things that I read in several of the articles was that small to medium retailers are already talking about how they're going to, they don't know if they're going to be able to survive this. Yeah. They're going to be the ones hardest hit. Yeah. Because they don't have the purchasing power to drive down the price of the good, which means that not only is the price higher, but the tariff's going to be higher. Right. Because the tariff is calculated based upon price of goods. Well, and it's based upon the supposed value or inherent value of the good. Yeah. Which is, like, that sounds subjective. Oh, it is totally subjective. I'm not for that.

[44:57] But yeah, I mean, I expect dollar for dollar, Walmart's going to pay less in tariffs than the yarn shop down the road. And that's going to be a problem because that's going to make those small retailers even less competitive from a price point. And you couple that with an economy that who knows what the fuck's going to happen with that. If the economy gets uncertain and people start tightening their belts, it gets even worse for small businesses. Yeah. Now, I did want to say one other downside of this bleak overview is that you may find it harder in the next few years to find workers for your haunt. Yeah. More so than usual. This has nothing to do with the tariffs, obviously. It has to do with the immigration crackdown, but also with the job market in general. Yeah.

[45:52] Well, and with things being more expensive and with some of the other things that are being proposed, people may just have to, frankly, work for more money and won't be able to take those seasonal jobs. Those fun jobs, especially if they need insurance, especially, you know. Yeah, and it's, you know, that's one thing I couldn't fit into this, but I'm shoving it in there. Yeah, do keep in mind that people who currently may be able to spare a month of Saturdays or a few nights for a home haunt or whatever might be stuck and forced to put in the work they need to do in order to survive. Exactly.

[46:41] Because, like I said, right now everything is so unpredictable. And even just looking at the tariff part of this yeah we don't really know where this is going a lot of this is hypothetical it is but yeah as we sit here today the tariffs against canada and mexico have are not not in effect the ones in china have and by the way china has already retaliated with tariffs of their own which i mean that's what tech canada and mexico are going to do which by the way if you ship stuff there as a business you probably need to be aware of that exactly because there is that other side of it yeah that's but that's the opposite end of this coin so yeah this is this is going to be difficult this is going to be a challenging time for the haunt industry but also for any industry yeah i mean the thing is the main point of this is the haunt industry is not some super special snowflake industry that is immune to these issues No. We are just as impacted, some ways more, some ways less. No. And we're going to feel the impact of this one way or the other.

[47:49] I think that's it. On that note, everyone, thank you for bearing with us. I'm sorry it was a heavy episode. We'll try to do something more fun next week. Maybe our conversations will be more happy over the next few days. I hope so. Fingers crossed. Well, now that we've talked about it, something else can come into our brains. Yes, exactly. Now that we've got this earworm out, we can talk about something else and maybe not go down infinite rabbit holes on this topic, trying to figure out what's up. So once again, this has been Episode 474 of Haunt Weekly, terrifying. Please check out more Haunt Weekly at hauntweekly.com, Haunt Weekly on Facebook, YouTube.com slash Haunt Weekly, and wherever you get your podcasts from. Until next time, I'm Jonathan. I'm Crystal. And we will see you all next week, hopefully on time this time.