There are different ways in which currency rates can affect piano prices.
1. A dealer has to pay more to the manufacturer to buy the pianos he or she sells.
This has a direct impact on the new pianos that come into the dealership.
2. Because the dealer has to pay more to the manufacturer to replace the pianos that he or she sells that are already on the dealership floor, the dealer may have to increase the prices of pianos that were purchased earlier under a different exchange rate in order to be able to replace them with new stock once they are sold.
3. The exchange rate can affect duty, which is likely to be based on a percentage of value/cost.
4. The exchange rate can affect shipping costs, depending on the currency used to pay for shipping.
Thus, increases can be more instant than one might think. The question of replacing pre-existing stock had not occurred to me until I talked about all of this with a friend of mine who is a jeweler. Gold prices have escalated wildly, and the jeweler cannot afford to sell jewelry at the old price of gold, even if the jeweler bought it at a lower price, because the jeweler has to maintain the store's stock, which requires replacing everything that is sold at a much higher price.
I hope this was not too garbled. I am not an economist, of course, but it seems to me that currency fluctuations--which seem only to be in a direction that is bad for American business--can have an immediate impact on prices.
