Toymakers, retailers brace for holiday shopping season disrupted by U.S. tariffs

Edmonton Journal

a day ago

With summer in full swing in the United States, retail executives are sweating a different season. It's less than 22 weeks before Christmas, a time when businesses that make and sell consumer goods usually nail down their holiday orders and prices.
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But President Donald Trump's vacillating trade policies, part of his effort to revive the nation's diminished manufacturing base and to reduce the U.S. deficit in exported goods, have complicated those end-of-year plans. Balsam Hill, which sells artificial trees and other decorations online, expects to publish fewer and thinner holiday catalogues because the featured products keep changing with the tariff — import tax — rates the president sets, postpones and revises.
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'The uncertainty has led us to spend all our time trying to rejigger what we're ordering, where we're bringing it in, when it's going to get here,' Mac Harman, CEO of Balsam Hill parent company Balsam Brands, said. 'We don't know which items we're going to have to put in the catalogue or not.'
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Months of confusion over which foreign countries' products may become more expensive to import has left a question mark over the holiday shopping season. U.S. retailers often begin planning for the winter holidays in January and typically finalize the bulk of their orders by the end of June. The seesawing tariffs already have factored into their calculations.
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The consequences for consumers? Stores may not have the specific gift items customers want come November and December. Some retail suppliers and buyers scaled back their holiday lines rather than risking a hefty tax bill or expensive imports going unsold. Businesses still are setting prices but say shoppers can expect many things to cost more, though by how much depends partly on whether Trump's latest round of 'reciprocal' tariffs kicks in next month.
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The lack of clarity has been especially disruptive for the U.S. toy industry, which sources nearly 80 per cent of its products from China. American toy makers usually ramp up production in April, a process delayed until late May this year after the president put a 145 per cent tariff on Chinese goods, according to Greg Ahearn, president and CEO of the Toy Association, an industry trade group.
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The U.S. tariff rate may have dropped significantly from its spring high — a truce in the U.S.-China trade war is set to expire on Aug. 12 — but continues to shape the forthcoming holiday period. Manufacturing activity is way down from a year ago for small- and medium-sized U.S. toy companies, Ahearn said.
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The late start to factory work in China means holiday toys are only now arriving at U.S. warehouses, industry experts said. A big unknown is whether tariffs will keep stores from replenishing supplies of any breakout hit toys that emerge in September, said James Zahn, editor-in-chief of the trade publication Toy Book.