President Donald Trump’s second-term economic plan can be summed up in one word: tariffs. When his barrage of these import taxes went into overdrive a month ago, markets trembled, and business leaders sounded alarms about the economic damage they would cause. After weeks of uncertainty and clashes with major companies, Trump’s tariffs hit their biggest roadblock yet in court, and while they may be back in place for now, a final ruling should be imminent.

Late Wednesday, the US Court of International Trade ruled that Trump had overstepped his authority when he imposed tariffs, effectively nullifying thew tariffs, after concluding that Congress has the sole authority to issue tariffs and decide other foreign trade matters, and that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 — which Trump has used to justify his ability to impose them — doesn’t grant the president «unlimited» authority on tariffs. The next day, an appeals court allowed the tariffs to go back into effect for the time being, while the administration calls for the Supreme Court to overturn the trade court ruling altogether. 

However, things shake out in the end, the initial ruling certainly came as a relief to many, given the chaos and uncertainty that Trump’s tariffs how caused thus far. For his part, Trump has recently lashed out against companies — like Apple and Walmart — that have reacted to the tariffs or discussed their impacts in ways he dislikes. Apple has been working to move manufacturing for the US market from China to relatively less-tariffed India, to which Trump has threatened them with a 25% penalty rate if they don’t bring manufacturing to the US instead. Experts have predicted that a US-made iPhone, for example, would cost consumers about $3,500. During a recent earnings call, Walmart warned that prices would rise on things like toys, tech and food at some point in the summer, which prompted Trump to demand the chain eat the costs themselves, another unlikely scenario.

Amid all this noise, you might still be wondering: What exactly are tariffs and what will they mean for me?

The short answer: Expect to pay more for at least some goods and services. For the long answer, keep reading, and for more, check out CNET’s price tracker for 11 popular and tariff-vulnerable products.

What are tariffs?

Put simply, a tariff is a tax on the cost of importing or exporting goods by a particular country. So, for example, a «60% tariff» on Chinese imports would be a 60% tax on the price of importing, say, computer components from China.

Trump has been fixated on imports as the centerpiece of his economic plans, often claiming that the money collected from taxes on imported goods would help finance other parts of his agenda. The US imports $3 trillion of goods from other countries annually. 

The president has also, more recently, shown a particular fixation on trade deficits, claiming that the US having a trade deficit with any country means that country is ripping the US off. This is a flawed understanding of the matter, as a lot of economists have said, deficits are often a simple case of resource realities: Wealthy nations like the US buy specific things from nations that have them, while those nations might in turn not be wealthy enough to buy much of anything from the US.

While Trump deployed tariffs in his first term, notably against China, he ramped up his plans more significantly for the 2024 campaign, promising 60% tariffs against China and a universal 20% tariff on all imports into the US. Now, tariffs against China are more than double that amount and a universal tariff on all exports is a reality.

«Tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented,» Trump said at a campaign stop in Michigan last year. At one point, he called himself «Tariff Man» in a post on Truth Social. 

Who pays the cost of tariffs?

Trump repeatedly claimed, before and immediately after returning to the White House, that the country of origin for an imported good pays the cost of the tariffs and that Americans would not see any price increases from them. However, as economists and fact-checkers stressed, this is not the case.

The companies importing the tariffed goods — American companies or organizations in this case — pay the higher costs. To compensate, companies can raise their prices or absorb the additional costs themselves.

So, who ends up paying the price for tariffs? In the end, usually you, the consumer. For instance, a universal tariff on goods from Canada would increase Canadian lumber prices, which would have the knock-on effect of making construction and home renovations more expensive for US consumers. While it is possible for a company to absorb the costs of tariffs without increasing prices, this is not at all likely, at least for now.

Speaking with CNET, Ryan Reith, vice president of International Data’s worldwide mobile device tracking programs, explained that price hikes from tariffs, especially on technology and hardware, are inevitable in the short term. He estimated that the full amount imposed on imports by Trump’s tariffs would be passed on to consumers, which he called the «cost pass-through.» Any potential efforts for companies to absorb the new costs themselves would come in the future, once they have a better understanding of the tariffs, if at all.

Which Trump tariffs have gone into effect?

Following Trump’s «Liberation Day» announcements on April 2, the following tariffs are in effect:

• A 25% tariff on all steel and aluminum imports.
• A 30% tariff on all Chinese imports until Aug. 10 while negotiations continue. China being a major focus of Trump’s trade agenda, this rate has been notably higher than others and has steadily increased as Beijing returned fire with tariffs of its own, peaking at 145%, which it could return to down the line if a deal is not reached.
• 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico not covered under the 2018 USMCA trade agreement brokered during Trump’s first term. The deal covers roughly half of all imports from Canada and about a third of those from Mexico, so the rest are subject to the new tariffs. Energy imports not covered by USMCA only will be taxed at 10%.
• A 25% tariff on all foreign-made cars and auto parts.
• A sweeping overall 10% tariff on all imported goods.

For certain countries that Trump said were more responsible for the US trade deficit, Trump imposed what he called «reciprocal» tariffs that exceed the 10% level: 20% for the 27 nations that make up the European Union, 26% for India, 24% for Japan and so on. These were meant to take effect on April 9 but were delayed by 90 days as a result of historic stock market volatility, which makes the new effective date July 8.

Trump’s claim that these reciprocal tariffs are based on high tariffs imposed against the US by the targeted countries has drawn intense pushback from experts and economists, who have argued that some of these numbers are false or potentially inflated. For example, the above chart claims a 39% tariff from the EU, despite its average tariff for US goods being around 3%. Some of the tariffs are against places that are not countries but tiny territories of other nations. The Heard and McDonald Islands, for example, are uninhabited. We’ll dig into the confusion around these calculations below.

Notably, that minimum 10% tariff will not be on top of those steel, aluminum and auto tariffs. Canada and Mexico were also spared from the 10% minimum additional tariff imposed on all countries the US trades with.

On April 11, the administration said smartphones, laptops and other consumer electronics, along with flat panel displays, memory chips and semiconductors, were exempt from reciprocal tariffs. But it wasn’t clear whether that would remain the case or whether such products might face different fees later.

How were the Trump reciprocal tariffs calculated?

The numbers released by the Trump administration for its barrage of «reciprocal» tariffs led to widespread confusion among experts. Trump’s own claim that these new rates were derived by halving the tariffs already imposed against the US by certain countries was widely disputed, with critics noting that some of the numbers listed for certain countries were much higher than the actual rates and some countries had tariff rates listed despite not specifically having tariffs against the US at all.

In a post to X that spread fast across social media, finance journalist James Surowiecki said that the new reciprocal rates appeared to have been reached by taking the trade deficit the US has with each country and dividing it by the amount the country exports to the US. This, he explained, consistently produced the reciprocal tariff percentages revealed by the White House across the board.

«What extraordinary nonsense this is,» Surowiecki wrote about the finding.

The White House later attempted to debunk this idea, releasing what it claimed was the real formula, though it was quickly determined that this formula was arguably just a more complex version of the one Surowiecki deduced.

What will the Trump tariffs do to prices?

In short: Prices are almost certainly going up, if not now, then eventually. That is, if the products even make it to US shelves at all, as some tariffs will simply be too high for companies to bother dealing with.

While the effects of a lot of tariffs might not be felt straight away, some potential real-world examples have already emerged. Microsoft has increased prices across the board for its Xbox gaming brand, with its flagship Xbox Series X console jumping 20% from $500 to $600. Elsewhere, Kent International, one of the main suppliers of bicycles to Walmart, announced that it would be stopping imports from China, which account for 90% of its stock.

Speaking about Trump’s tariff plans just before they were announced, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said that they would generate $6 trillion in revenue over the next decade. Given that tariffs are most often paid by consumers, CNN characterized this as potentially «the largest tax hike in US history.» New estimates from the Yale Budget Lab, cited by Axios, predict that Trump’s new tariffs will cause a 2.3% increase in inflation throughout 2025. This translates to about a $3,800 increase in expenses for the average American household.

Reith, the IDC analyst, told CNET that Chinese-based tech companies, like PC makers Acer, Asus and Lenovo, have «100% exposure» to these import taxes as they currently stand, with products like phones and computers the most likely to take a hit. He also said that the companies best positioned to weather the tariff impacts are those that have moved some of their operations out of China to places like India, Thailand and Vietnam, singling out the likes of Apple, Dell and HP. Samsung, based in South Korea, is also likely to avoid the full force of Trump’s tariffs. 

In an effort to minimize its tariff vulnerability, Apple has begun to move the production of goods for the US market from China to India.

Will tariffs impact prices immediately?

In the short term — the first days or weeks after a tariff takes effect — maybe not. There are still a lot of products in the US imported pre-tariffs and on store shelves, meaning the businesses don’t need a price hike to recoup import taxes. Once new products need to be brought in from overseas, that’s when you’ll see prices start to climb because of tariffs or you’ll see them become unavailable. 

That uncertainty has made consumers anxious. CNET’s survey revealed that about 38% of shoppers feel pressured to make certain purchases before tariffs make them more expensive. About 10% say they have already made certain purchases in hopes of getting them in before the price hikes, while 27% said they have delayed purchases for products that cost more than $500. Generally, this worry is the most acute concerning smartphones, laptops and home appliances.

Mark Cuban, the billionaire businessman and Trump critic, voiced concerns about when to buy certain things in a post on Bluesky just after Trump’s «Liberation Day» announcements. In it, he suggested that consumers might want to stock up on certain items before tariff inflation hits.

«It’s not a bad idea to go to the local Walmart or big box retailer and buy lots of consumables now,» Cuban wrote. «From toothpaste to soap, anything you can find storage space for, buy before they have to replenish inventory. Even if it’s made in the USA, they will jack up the price and blame it on tariffs.»

CNET’s Money team recommends that before you make any purchase, especially of a high-ticket item, be sure that the expenditure fits within your budget and your spending plans in the first place. Buying something you can’t afford now because it might be less affordable later can be burdensome, to say the least.

What is the goal of the White House tariff plan?

The typical goal behind tariffs is to discourage consumers and businesses from buying the tariffed, foreign-sourced goods and encourage them to buy domestically produced goods instead. When implemented in the right way, tariffs are generally seen as a useful way to protect domestic industries. 

One of the stated intentions for Trump’s tariffs is along those lines: to restore American manufacturing and production. However, the White House also claims to be having negotiations with numerous countries looking for tariffs exemptions and some officials have also floated the idea that the tariffs will help finance Trump’s tax cuts.

You don’t have to think about those goals for too long before you realize that they’re contradictory: If manufacturing moves to the US or if a bunch of countries are exempt from tariffs then tariffs aren’t actually being collected and can’t be used to finance anything. This and many other points have led a lot of economists to allege that Trump’s plans are misguided. 

In terms of returning — or «reshoring» — manufacturing in the US, tariffs are a better tool for protecting industries that already exist because importers can fall back on them right away. Building up the factories and plants needed for this in the US could take years, leaving Americans to suffer under higher prices in the interim. 

That problem is worsened by the fact that the materials needed to build those factories will also be tariffed, making the costs of «reshoring» production in the US too heavy for companies to stomach. These issues, and the general instability of American economic policies under Trump, are part of why experts warn that Trump’s tariffs could have the opposite effect: keeping manufacturing out of the US and leaving consumers stuck with inflated prices. Any factories that do get built in the US because of tariffs also have a high chance of being automated, canceling out a lot of job creation potential. To give you one real-world example of this: When warning customers of future price hikes, toy maker Mattel also noted that it had no plans to move manufacturing to the US.

Trump has reportedly been fixated on the notion that Apple’s iPhone — the most popular smartphone in the US market — can be manufactured entirely in the US. This has been broadly dismissed by experts, for a lot of the same reasons mentioned above, but also because an American-made iPhone could cost upward of $3,500. One report from 404 Media dubbed the idea «a pure fantasy.» The overall sophistication and breadth of China’s manufacturing sector has also been cited, with CEO Tim Cook stating in 2017 that the US lacks the number of tooling engineers to make its products.

For more, see how tariffs might raise the prices of Apple products and find some expert tips for saving money.

Victoria’s Secret’s US website is back up and running after being taken offline earlier this week following what the company called a «security incident.»

On Wednesday, the clothing and lingerie company replaced its regular US retail site with a note to customers saying that it was aware of and dealing with the incident, adding that its website and some services were temporarily shut down as «a precaution.» It did not offer details about what kind of security incident occurred, but said that its brick-and-mortar Victoria’s Secret and Pink stores remained open.

The Ohio-based company’s security incident comes less than a week after Adidas announced that some of its consumer data had been stolen from a third-party customer-service provider. The athletic apparel company said Friday the stolen data mainly consisted of contact information for shoppers who contacted its customer service help desk in the past. UK-based Marks & Spencer stopped taking online orders back in April after its own cyberattack. That retailer expects its online services to remain disrupted until July.

Victoria’s Secret also noted its incident in a Instagram post Wednesday night and linked to a customer FAQ on its corporate site. The FAQ said the company was working to fulfill orders placed before Monday. Once those orders have shipped, customers will receive emails with tracking information. 

Victoria’s Secret said it’s extending the redemption of in-store coupons and mailers through Sunday and the period for online returns by an additional 30 days. The redemption period for earned rewards will also be extended, though the company didn’t say for how long.

Victoria’s Secret operates more than 13,500 stores in about 70 countries.

I’ve been playing board games for decades, from crowd-pleasers like Settlers of Catan and Sushi Go to King of Tokyo and Descent — and in recent years, I’ve seen them show up in even my most mainstream social gatherings. In a world overrun by digital screens, tactile games are a novelty that gather people around a table rather than in tiny squares on a Zoom call.

With bold, vibrant art styles and creative pieces to play with, tabletop gaming has expanded beyond mainstream favorites like Monopoly and Settlers of Catan with ever more intriguing games like Gloomhaven and Hive. It’s these physical components that set board games apart, as their makers think up creative scenarios that players engage with using well-designed pieces. Picking up and moving these parts around is core to the magic of tabletop games, of ideas rising out of the board and fitting in players’ hands.

But the Trump administration’s tariffs are crashing hard into that domestic scene, with dire financial consequences for businesses that depend on the import of custom physical pieces. From custom miniatures of creatures and vehicles to the boards the games are made on to the boxes they come in, the vast majority of tabletop products come out of specialized factories in China with decades of experience. Board games are created in volumes and shipped at times that make selling such unique productions profitable.

Tariffs have affected many other industries that source products from China, like tech and gadget makers, but those may be manufactured in other areas. The board game industry sources its pieces from specialty factories in China that can handle small-scale batches of very specialized parts. Amid the tariffs, the board game industry has scrambled to find production alternatives in other countries, but the specificity of its products has made it difficult. 

If they’re forced to keep making games in China, they may need to raise prices, which would be passed on to the consumer. 

The tariffs haven’t just paused imports — they’ve thrown the rest of the year’s schedule into disarray. As a longtime board game player, I’m now facing the prospect of store shelves being empty around Christmas. Now is when board game makers put in their orders for games to ship in time for the holidays. But a dizzying uncertainty — most recently with a federal court blocking many of Trump’s tariffs before an appeals court reinstated them the next day — might lead them to limit or cancel their orders, leaving store shelves empty around Christmas.

«The next three weeks will be telling if we’re going to have a holiday season or not, and then we’ll know who’s in business next year — because if they can’t make the holiday season, they may have to close up,» John Stacy, executive director of the Game Manufacturers Association, a trade organization representing about 1,700 companies in the industry, said in early May. 

Many board game makers are small and medium-size businesses with a dozen or fewer full-time employees, making this especially devastating. Their slim margins rely on tight timelines for order and delivery to retailers and consumers to survive. These tariffs have threatened the financial outlook of anyone bringing games into the US and led the entire industry into an existential crisis. 

Cepholafair Games, which makes the very successful board game Gloomhaven, successfully funded its next Gloomhaven game on crowdfunding platform Backerkit. This March, the company planned to deliver on its promises by shipping some of its new products to backers’ doors — except for Trump’s new tariffs, which at their peak would have made it so expensive to import them into the country that it would be cheaper to have never made them at all.

«I speak on behalf of those publishers, but we cut things really tight, and we depend on the infrastructure of our industry, the right retail stores and distribution models to really get our games distributed widely and at margins that make sense for us to operate,» said Cephalofair Chief Operating Officer Price Johnson.

Trump’s tariffs have gone up and down, charging importers at their height a proposed 145% fee before temporarily reeling that back to 30% for importing from China — at least for a 90-day pause before the number could shoot back up. Even that timeline is thrown into question with the recent court decisions about blocking the tariffs. 

The 90-day pause may be enough time to get existing products out of China, but is «the bare-minimum step to avoid pandemic-level trade disruption,» Johnson wrote in a Facebook post criticizing the topsy-turvy tariff rates. 

But even that lower tariff rate is potentially unprofitable to import existing product stock that board game makers have stashed in warehouses outside the US, waiting for trade relief — and wondering whether to act now or gamble on whether the tariffs spike again, which could potentially bankrupt them to import. Publishers with products to sell now are gambling with incomplete information, Stacy said. Those who will take longer than the 90-day pause to ship or finish production runs of games are left with even more uncertainty.

«How can you, in good conscience, commit to a new product without knowing the costs to make, ship and import it?» Stacy said. «Setting prices to ensure profitability becomes challenging without all the factors included in the calculation. It’s like playing a game where the rules change every round, and it’s unclear what those rules are until you are halfway through the next round.»

Under the 145% tariffs, 51% of the board game companies GAMA surveyed in late April said they would have to shut their doors or lay off employees if conditions didn’t improve in two to three months. «These are small businesses — they don’t have that kind of cash to weather a storm like this,» Stacy said.

Rollacrit, a board game maker and nerdy merchandise company staffed by veterans from the shuttered online retailer ThinkGeek, had been sitting on a reorder of Heroes of Barcadia, one of its more popular games, which it couldn’t afford to bring into the US under the 145% tariffs. 

«If we were to ship it in now, the amount of money we’d have to pay is astronomical,» Erin Zipperle, owner of Rollacrit, told me in early May. 

In the face of financial calamity, tabletop game producers have been scrambling for alternatives, making drastic changes and calling their US elected representatives in hopes they could lobby for leniency from the Trump administration. The crisis, reminiscent of the COVID pandemic’s disruptions, has already forced several game publishers to shut down entirely. A handful of board game companies, including Stonemaier Games, XYZ Game Labs and DinkerHouse games joined product makers from other industries in suing the Trump administration over the tariffs. 

Even if the tariffs were completely recalled tomorrow, their impacts of increased hardship would still ripple through the industry. Board game makers would clamor for slots in factory production queues, shipping costs would ramp up, and the resulting cost and supply instability would shake consumer trust. If the tariffs extend for weeks or months to come, more publishers will likely go under, and there may not be any new board games on store shelves by the holidays.

The board game industry is a flotilla of small businesses

When most people think of board games, they imagine Monopoly or another mainstream game sold by a company as colossal as Hasbro or Mattel. But many of the popular upstarts defining the new era of tabletop gaming come from companies a fraction of the size. As widely known as the tactical fantasy roleplaying game Gloomhaven is within the games community, Cephalofair employs eight people full time, including Johnson. Rollacrit lists 10 employees on its staff page. Stonemaier Games has eight.

For folks who have spent years building their businesses in an industry that requires a unique alchemy of product and marketing shrewdness blended with the wonder of playful design, becoming besieged with spiking tariffs has seemed like something of an existential crisis. Zipperle felt like he worked his entire career ensuring he had enough money to properly start and grow his business organically without outside investment, and now this happens.

«We’re literally the American dream of what you want to do to create a company out of nothing, and to get to this point just to be derailed by the government from a random war on toys?» Zipperle said. 

That echoes Trump’s recent comment that «maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls» as a result of the tariffs. 

Board game makers weren’t caught unawares — after all, Trump campaigned on tariffs, and had deployed them in his first term. But the severity blindsided the industry, including Jamey Stegmaier, founder of Stonemaier Games, maker of hit games like Wingspan and Tokaido.

«We were expecting tariffs and slimmer margins, but not like this,» Stegmaier said.

Though Stegmaier concedes that the decrease to 30% tariffs is progress, it still doesn’t take into consideration the need for grace periods for all the products made before the tariffs — around 250,000 units for Stonemaier, including the yet-to-be-launched game Vantage. Like Cephalofair’s Price, Stegmaier has been vocal in his criticism of the Trump administration’s tariffs, and even after their reduction to 30%, will continue taking part in the lawsuit against the president for tariff disruption of business.

«We will absolutely proceed with the lawsuit, which focuses on the Constitutional power of Congress to apply taxes (not the president),» Stegmaier told me. «A tax like this has such a massive impact on small US businesses that it deserves the due process that we’re seeking with the lawsuit.»

The purported intent of the tariffs is to spur US manufacturing instead of sourcing parts or products from China. But board game makers that I spoke to don’t believe they’ll have that effect. Even in the miraculous scenario of companies breaking ground today on new factories, it could take three to five years before the first ones start producing the kinds of miniatures and other products needed for board games. And it could be a decade before the US ramps up to the kind of product expertise and factory scale that China has. By then, many tabletop companies could be long gone.

«It’s a craft,» Zipperle said, cautioning about all the learning and care that goes into avoiding what can go wrong among dangerous plastic fabrication processes, let alone the years of expertise needed to operate such precisely calibrated machines. «You don’t just start making stained glass windows.»

Then there’s the vulnerability of investing millions of dollars in a factory given the uncertain future. Even if a US company invests in domestic factories to make board game parts, if the tariffs are lifted at any time in the years to come, board game makers will likely simply go back to paying for cheaper production in China. It just won’t be cost-effective to build in the US without consistent investment for the better part of a decade.

A decisive moment for small businesses with products ready to ship

It’s not just financial success at stake, but customer trust too. Cephalofair and other board game makers have won customer trust with track records of successful crowdfunding campaigns that stick to schedules and deliver products as they predicted. Now, tariffs threaten that trust. 

Rollacrit hit all the successful milestones of a crowdfunded project, but at the worst time. After launching a Kickstarter in September for its Heroes of Barcadia game that raised over $1.2 million and secured lots of preorders at set prices, the company put in its order for production, which finally finished in April, on the day Trump announced reciprocal tariffs. «It’s my new favorite April Fools’ Day joke,» Zipperle lamented.

Crowdfunding is a pivotal part of these small board game companies’ business models, as it allows efficient fundraising that directly connects to customers. In 2024, backers pledged $220 million for tabletop games on Kickstarter, and while tariffs haven’t yet measurably impacted the platform, the company’s head of games, Asher McClennahan, said lifting the tariffs would be a relief for campaign creators. 

«Unlike large corporations, most Kickstarter creators are small teams — sometimes just individuals — working hard to bring their ideas to life. Even modest cost increases can have an outsized effect on their ability to fulfill rewards or stay financially on track,» McClennahan told me. Kickstarter recently added a Pledge Manager to handle post-campaign schedule adjustments and a tariff manager to handle US import costs.  

Game makers like Cephalofair, Stonemaier and Rollacrit with successful crowdfunding campaigns scheduled to deliver backer rewards are scrambling to fulfill their orders on time, and the chaos is also affecting those about to launch new ones, said Maxwell Salzberg, co-founder of BackerKit. 

«You’ve seen less projects in the tabletop games category being fulfilled, because it sort of feels like everyone’s waiting for the shoe to drop,» Salzberg said.

BackerKit is helping how it can, releasing its own Tariff Manager and a way to charge backers for shipping later — say, after tariffs are reduced or (hopefully) repealed. 

«That’s what BackerKit provides for creators,» Salzburg said. «Creators are going to create. Crowdfunding is predicated off of people making cool stuff, and that’s not going to ever stop. Not even tariffs can stop them.»

Alternatives? Move production outside China, abandon retailer allies…and look beyond the US

Originally, Trump’s reciprocal tariffs meant dramatically higher prices on imports from many other countries, but a 90-day pause on those tariffs left products from China suffering far more severe cost increases in comparison. In the interim, board game makers have looked at other nearby countries with comparable production capability, like Vietnam and Indonesia, as temporary alternatives — or if the China-US trade war drags on, for the longer term. Tech giant Apple made similar moves over the last five years to shift iPhone production to Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries, as well as India. 

Amid the uncertainty, one strategy board game makers are considering is ramping up sales outside the US. Currently, 65% of Stonemaier’s sales go to American buyers with 35% elsewhere in the world, but they may try to shift that split to a more even 50-50, Stegmaier said. 

Another way Stonemaier could offset tariffs and improve its slim margins is to push for more direct sales to consumers, though it’s reluctant «because I really, really appreciate our distributor and retail infrastructure,» Stegmaier said. «But it might be necessary because of lower margins in China.»

There will still be board game fans in the US, and there could be ways to avoid tariff price hikes by making them in-country. In fact, that’s what board game makers explored during the supply chain crisis caused by the COVID pandemic. The handful of factories in the US that make game components are specialty producers — Cartamundi, a Belgian game producer, owns a factory in Texas that makes cards for Magic: The Gathering, and another in Michigan produces basic plastic parts that don’t match the meticulous detail that modern board games require.

When Stegmaier looked into diversifying game production to make parts in China and boxes in the US, he discovered that it would cost as much to make just the boxes domestically as it did to make an entire complete game in China. 

Further, Chinese factories are better at producing at low scales and high numbers. For smaller board game creators with modest crowdfunding campaigns that want to make only 1,000 units or so to satisfy backers, China can facilitate that, while US factories might require runs of 5,000 to 10,000, Stegmaier said.

If the tariffs go away tomorrow, the damage is still done

Board game makers continue looking for ways to survive. But even if the tariffs were completely ended tomorrow, the damage would still be done. «Probably close to a dozen or two» board game businesses have already shut down, Stacy told me.

Game makers like Greater Than Games and Final Frontier Games have publicly announced their shuttering, blaming the economic conditions and uncertainty that they’d be able to hold out until relief came. If it doesn’t arrive in the next few weeks, more may follow, Stacy said. This point in the year is when board game businesses order their stock for the holiday season, and they may not be able to afford that. 

The reduction to 30% offered a brief respite for Stonemaier, which was able to place orders for more stock. The bad news is that the company could order only enough during the 90-day pause to last until mid-August, which is well before its holiday print run would arrive in the US. This would strand them unless they receive more tariff respite.

Ultimately, increased prices to import on thin margins are going to impact the board game industry regardless, which could — and may still — lead to increased costs passed on to the consumer. But companies can’t make decisions until they have enough information to make big decisions about pricing, product sourcing and how they’ll run their business. 

«Uncertainty is one of the core problems with the way these tariffs were implemented,» Stegmaier said. «There was no due process, just an agent of chaos raising tariffs from 20% to 145% in the span of one week. As a result, it is impossible to properly plan ahead.»