Pundits have proclaimed for years that our society has peaked, and subsequent generations will have it harder than the one before. Everything is increasingly scarcer, more expensive, and less opulent than it was: jobs, houses, cars, lifestyles, education. Surveyors have been on the DEW line for this trend for at least twenty-five years. We do more with less staff, for less profit, and more expense, while others steal tasks that used to be exclusively ours.
The country is roiling through mass upheaval these days as the executive branch makes an earnest but uneven effort to reset the economy and recover that bright future we have lost. I, for one, appreciate that effort, but the execution is nerve shattering. It’s a wild ride we find ourselves on. Will attempting to level the global economic playing field halt our downward slide? We’ll soon find out.
Will all this tariff talk lead to a ‘better deal’ for America, or just make all foreign goods more expensive? Economists are divided on that question, but ‘divided’ might be overstating the case when 90 percent of economists interviewed predict disaster if the US stays it course. Nevertheless, at the time of writing, we are barely 100 days into this exploration of the unknown and I will withhold judgement for a little longer. Suppose the administration succeeds or at least battles the reciprocal tariffs to a stalemate. The effect on surveying and surveyors may be minor. If the economy keeps chugging, we’ll absorb some higher costs in the interest of bringing manufacturing back to the US, which should produce a surplus of surveying opportunities in short order. But supposing the tariff battle continues without satisfactory resolution. What then?
‘Made in America’ does not and will not have much of a footprint with respect to our equipment. Instruments will continue to be assembled in Europe and elsewhere from parts made in Asia and elsewhere. Will anything change? Regarding drones, where the embracing of Chinese tech has been evident for 10 years, there are only a small handful of expensive and feature-deficient drones that carry the ‘Made in America’ imprimatur.
Our equipment, mostly foreign made, will continue to be so, and will likely increase in cost due to the effects of applying tariffs. According to a CNBC headline (sorry…), the price of a fully American-made Apple iPhone would be $3,500. Apply that same percentage of increase to a new total station or a pair of GNSS receivers. How much will a receiver cost under a punitive tariff scenario? More than you and I are likely to want to spend.
If we surveyors, en masse, choose to hold on to our ageing equipment, foregoing new purchases while the tariff battle rages, what might the effects be? If the big three (Trimble, Leica & Topcon) aren’t selling much new equipment, their dealer networks will suffer, and the salesperson who comes by your office periodically will be let go. The dealer networks will become less robust and therefore less reliable. The big three and their dealers may hesitate to spend much cash sponsoring surveying conferences. Could we hold a good conference without vendors? I wonder. And they may discontinue running ads in magazines, like this one, destroying the revenue stream for these publishers. Then clever fellows like me are suddenly out of a job. Hey, wait a minute…