Trade Wars Are So Much Fun

I caught this on CNBC:

Thor Industries’ warning about rising tariff-related costs in its third-quarter earnings report sent shares plunging to 2018 lows, but CEO Bob Martin told CNBC on Thursday that the company is finding ways to blunt the impact.

“We thought it’d be minimal,” the CEO admitted in a “Mad Money” interview with Jim Cramer. “Today, they’re still kind of all over the board and we’re just finding ways to kind of counteract them whenever we can.”

For Thor, the United States’ largest recreational vehicle manufacturer, that means cutting raw costs and “de-contenting,” or taking certain ancillary products and features out of its higher end RVs.

Thor’s stock has been under pressure since the Trump administration enacted steel and aluminum tariffs in May, which hike Thor’s costs by stymieing cheap imports.

That is an interesting word, isn’t it?

De-contenting.

De-contenting means that you pay the same price, or sometimes more, for less.

This might not be the best time to purchase a new higher end RV from Thor.

Of course, trade wars hurt on both sides.

The Canadian dollar has slid below 76 cents which will make our first winter south in retirement considerably more expensive.

Hopefully the politicians and the bureaucrats in Canada and the U.S. come to a reasonable compromise.