For whom the bells jingle?

Trump’s tariffs mean little festive cheer for embattled US toy industry

- Marina Lopes For The Straits Times

Screeenwriter Maurice Hill buying toys for his two young children at a Walmart store in Washington where he says prices are stable. At least I know what to expect, he said, examining FurReal toys. It's consistent.

(ST PHOTOS: MARINA LOPES)

Ms Jennifer Bergman sat up in bed one morning in June and opened her laptop to the month’s bills. It was five months into America’s latest tariff war, and the numbers no longer added up.

Rent was due in two weeks; her suppliers wanted payment now. She called her landlord, saying: “I can’t do this any more.”

Her toy store, West Side Kids, was a beloved Manhattan shop that her mother had started in 1981 and a neighbourhood fixture where children pressed their noses against the window each December.

When the Trump administration announced a 10 per cent tariff on Chinese imports in March, she was at Toy Fair, an annual industry conference. Phones buzzed across the convention floor as buyers and manufacturers tried to make sense of what the new tax would mean.

“Don’t worry,” suppliers told her. “We've got enough stock to last the year.” They would keep prices low, they assured their customers.

By April, that promise had vanished. Tariffs on Chinese goods climbed to 145 per cent - a newly announced 125 per cent plus a 20 per cent tariff aimed at curbing the flow of fentanyl precursors into the US. This “fentanyl” tariff has been halved to 10 per cent, at least temporarily, following US-China talks in October.

Each night, long after the last customer drifted out, Ms Bergman paced the aisles with a pricing gun. She peeled off tags and pressed on new ones as suppliers upped their prices.

She had been negotiating to sell the business, hoping someone else might carry it forward. But after the tariff increase, two potential buyers vanished.