Get ready for more expensive birthdays and Christmas: This is how tariffs could affect toy prices
Here’s how Donald Trump’s tariffs are set to make things more expensive for your children.
I am going to be honest with you, dear reader: after writing what feels like 5,000 articles over the past 5 days, I don’t have any more fancy ways to impart the information that Donald Trump’s tariffs are going to cause a storm of excrement to rain down across the United States of America as the President works on his plan to make enemies of just about every country on the planet. That’s the news, there you go.
The tariffs, Trump’s favourite word since he was elected for the second time, are set to hit American businesses like a runaway train as goods become more expensive overnight to both import and export.
Prices are set to rise of almost quite literally everything in the country, as the United States does not have the capacity to be completely self-sustainable. One particularly impacted area of commerce for citizens of the United States is set to be toys, as nearly none of them are made in-house with American materials.
You don’t have to be the second coming of James Bond to have spotted with your keen eye that plenty of plastic toys for our kids come from China but as of April 9, the US will impose a 54% tariff on nearly everything coming from the Asian nation, making them immediately more expensive.
Tariffs set to make Shein, Temu and Aliexpress goods more expensive
And rates go even higher, say CNN, to 79%, if Trump follows through with his promise to slap an additional 25% tariff on any nation that buys oil from Venezuela, which China has done.
As well as that, starting in May, the huge 54% tariff rate will also be applied to packages worth less than $800 coming to the US from China and Hong Kong. That includes companies such as Shein, Temu and AliExpress.
China and Vietnam ship a total of $15 billion worth of toys to the USA, with The Toy Association estimating that 77% of all toys sold in the US are manufactured in China.
Yes, Trump's tariffs will hurt US consumers in the short term, but, you should focus on the long term, where it will also hurt them.
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) April 3, 2025
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Greg Ahearn, president and CEO of The Toy Association added that toy companies, as things stand ahead of the tariffs, already have a stark lack of room to absorb much of the higher costs from tariffs since the profit margins on toys tend to be slim on a good day. Ahearn’s best guess was that toys made in China that are sold in the US will cost buyers at least 30% more than they currently do.
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