“Things have ground to a halt,“ said Staph, chief executive of Duncan Toys Company, which has a warehouse in Indiana.
Nearly 100 days into President Donald Trump’s White House return, US businesses are scrambling to adjust to fast-changing trade policies.
Of over $17 billion worth of toys imported to the US last year, more than $13 billion came from China.
Firms there have developed specialized abilities to produce intricate parts for items like its best-selling yo-yos.
The move raised the duty that US firms pay when they import any Chinese-made toys -- from plushies to action figures -- from zero to 145 percent, more than doubling import costs.
“It’s tough to build any sort of strategy and go for a plan when we know that things are changing almost on a daily basis.”
Rita Pin Ahrens, who runs three toy stores including one in Washington, started receiving “tariff surcharges” of 15 percent to 25 percent in March. She expects them to mount to 145 percent.
Still, she said: “We’re trying to minimize the cost to our consumers.”
“It has been a complete nightmare,“ she said. “I am really, truly worried about whether we can actually sustain the store.”
They struggle to pay sudden tariffs on containers of toys that may have already been manufactured.
‘Difficult Christmas’
Typically, toys produced in spring arrive over the summer for shipping in the fall as stores prepare for the holiday shopping boom, with around 90 percent of stock coming from overseas.
And if tariffs remain in force, “the pricing of those toys that are even available will probably be twice, if not more, the price they were last year,“ said Ahearn of The Toy Association.
The injection molding process used to produce many items requires extremely large, heavy tools that cannot be moved and must be installed from scratch.
But in March, Trump raised the level to 20 percent. In April, the figure exploded to 145 percent.
“Toys are important for children’s development,“ Ahrens said, noting that toys were excluded from tariffs during Trump’s first administration.
“I really urge the president to do that again.”
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