The Little World

Will Trump manage to shoot Snoopy down?

If the Petulant of the United States succeeds in nailing his tariffs to the fence and/or increases them to an unsustainable level, will he put the nail in the coffin for imported model kits? Will US citizens be restricted to what they can buy from US moulders? Will new Airfix, Tamiya, Trumpeter, Eduard, and all the rest be squeezed from the shelves for re-pops of old Monogram, AMT, or worse?

And will American modellers find that they are increasingly being restricted to the Mustang, MISSOURI, and MoPar prototypes as local factories decline to invest on foreign types to model?

We may never know if the US publishers decide to hide behind similar money-grabbing shields – the paywall and subscription site, for instance. The real danger to them in there is if we stop caring out here.

I’ve still got the desire to build any number of American aircraft that the collection lacks. If I can do it with Japanese, Czech, Ukrainian, or Chinese kits at a reasonable price, I will. If someone in California wants an unsustainable price for a ” Made in USA ” label, I won’t.

Snoopy flies a Sopwith Camel, and Tommy Sopwith was very definitely British.