Your comments about shipping from America are interesting. I work for a US company and export control is a massive red tape burden for us, can you believe that i cannot even send a certificate of calibration or users manual for a plating machine without having it approved for export? I can send the machine no problem but not the users guide! I'm not American, I don't live there and none of my shipping goes there but i still have to deal with all this BS.
Their crude way of trying to pull in some tax money a couple of years ago when the Americans themselves realised that they'd run out of money - by enforcing export tax on EVERYTHING leaving the country - has backfired and now they've lost an awful lot of business. This has hit the smaller companies the hardest I think.
Try ordering a new rifle stock from McMillan today and you'll find out what real bureaucracy is... It's just a piece of moulded plastic.
Actually, they can't even sell rifle optics (scopes) abroad any longer if that model has been, or are being, used by any military organisation because the new export regulations forbid this. We're talking jail time if they ship things anyway...
As someone who's into long range shooting this is a huge problem because we all are using milspec gear and nowadays we have to do shady deals just to get simple parts just because they are now classified as "military equipment"! There are ways around it but most smaller, and bigger also, companies simply hasn't got the ability to sort out the export approvals. I can't even send my Premier 5-25x56 scope for service any longer because it'll be illegal for them so send it back to me!?! A scope like that costs between £4000-5000 and they used to ship them 24/7 to other countries and a lot of people made their paychecks from this.
If the US suddenly decided to leave Iraq then all of these companies would go bust simply because they can only sell their goods to the US forces nowadays. Makes you think...?
The new export regulations has meant that smaller firms no longer can sell their goods abroad simply because they can't afford the export process, and the export (import for me) cost has almost doubled the price for many goods. And since you have to pay import tax on anything bought from the US that means that it's now too expensive to order anything from there.
They thought they were going to make money on this but instead they've lost it all.
I can only imagine the stupid amounts of work needed to get an export approval today, which is the backside of this story - and how greedy politicians made things worse for everyone.
I used to work for some of the biggest developers/producers/manufacturers of telecoms equipment in the world before I had to retire, but before I left we pretty much shut down all of our local offices in the US and only left a handful of people to run a front, so we would still be in the region. No real work was ever going to happen there though because of all the red tapes we were slapped with.
Not even the bigger American companies have any manufacturing left in the US because of this. All the goods and shipping is done from EU where there are much easier import/export regulations.
Oops, that turned into an export/tax rant...
...but it's the sad reality. Last week I saw a scale model I really wanted on eBay - a Testors SR-71 Blackbird. One was going for $55 and it wasn't going to go for cheaper anywhere else!
Sadly when reading the fine print I had to withdraw my bid because I discovered a sinister plot to enforce even more tax and export duties. It took me a couple of hours to work out how much the extra charge would be because they refused to tell me until I'd won the bid - but delivered it would've been over $200! That's 4 times the price!
We'll just have to send all of our money to Asia instead...
