Tariffs, how much, when, how long whats affected, what to do? | Selling

ricarmic · 2026-02-21T18:59:53.892000Z

I'm putting this out because here's where my heads at, and parts of my thinking may be of use to others in style or content. (plus typing this out helps me clarify it in my own head!) My current situation:-I sell stamps, via the post office/Zonos, aside from Zonos errors till now there's zero tariff-I haven't compiled specific statistics but US sales against Canada/rest of the world have diminished-I have the problem that half (2500ish) of my items are on .COM so I can't easily block US folks for half my sales*.-Generally everything is free shipping to domestic country. So if I plunk a shipping charge on all .COM items to the US aside from slowing down US customer sales, I also ding myself $$$ wise on international shipments because the fees are now charged on the international shipping price instead of zero.-as things have been evolving I've been adjusting what I list where, but as most know I've got a lot of long haul items that've been running for 10 years or more. What things might happen:-because till now I have no tariffs, I use Zonos prepay which costs me nothing. Going foreward, it could cost 10% or 15% or whatever plus $2 each item. The 10% or 15% isn't as much a concern as the $2 flat fee because at least in my world the amount of $20 and under items selling ($10 is my minimum) is far higher than stuff above that. This means my $10 items to the US would catch 10/15% plus the $2 fee which peels up to 25% off the top before all the usual costs.-how many US folks will buy now? My perceived % was low before, I think it will go lower now, no sales to the US since this latest round started-if I go on time away I lose ALL sales here*-how much do I lose overall if I stay open and bear the additional costs, and can I afford that? So my plan is to leave the store open, I think the costs will be less than I fear against "worldwide" sales. I'll probably stop listing new stuff temporarily. I will more closely watch how much extra in total (of all sales here) it is costing me on average for a week or few and revise my thoughts and approach after that. *I do happen to synchronize my items to another site where I can "block" US buyers or ding them more shipping, because there my domestic shipping is Canada. I also discovered that the synchronization stays live even if my ebay store is on time away here (unless I put it on vacation on the other site too) but sales volume does well to be 10% of what it is here.

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Tariffs, how much, when, how long whats affected, what to do? | Selling | eBay Canada EN