Fewer releases, spending freezes and rising prices: board game publishers face volatile financial future as US hikes China tariff to 20%, brings in 25% Canada, Mexico tariffs

Board game publishers already battling the financial fallout of Donald Trump’s trade war are now facing an even more volatile future, after the US President doubled the country’s tariffs on Chinese imports to 20% and brought in 25% tariffs for goods from Canada and Mexico.

Publishers large and small have been attempting to navigate an almost chaotically volatile financial environment since Trump began talk of widespread tariffs last November, with initial threats from the then President-elect calling for tariffs of up to 100% on China, where the vast majority of board games are made.

The response in the industry to those figures tended towards either despair for the industry’s future, or pragmatic disbelief that the threats were anything other than bluster designed to intimidate the US’ global trading partners.

The reality began to set in on February 4 when Trump imposed a 10% tariff on Chinese imports – a level already hugely problematic for an industry which traditionally works on razor-thin margins and has to work on a long supply chain. That tariff has now been doubled to 20%, and Trump has continually threatened further tariffs on countries he deems are being “unfair” to the US through international trade.

More than the raw numbers, though, the problem being faced by publishers is the enormous and ongoing uncertainty over new changes, with short and long-term plans having to be thrown out and redrawn at a moment’s notice.

The 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada, for example, were originally announced on February 1, but within days had been postponed for a month. Those tariffs ultimately went into force on March 4, but within minutes of this article being published Trump announced they would be significantly reduced in scope until April 2 – a date he has promised will see other tariffs imposed on more countries around the world.

The China tariff hike could scarcely have come at a worse time for Renegade Game Studios, which is in the middle of a major push to grow plastics-heavy miniatures game Heroscape after signing a licensing deal with Hasbro for the relaunch of the classic game.

Company founder Scott Gaeta told BoardGameWire at the GAMA Expo trade show at the end of February that his long-time data-driven company had been running tariff scenarios for more than a year, and was looking at which other countries in Asia could be suitable for manufacturing its games.

He said at the time, “We’re on top of as much as we can be. But unfortunately, we just never know what’s going to happen. Like, we could be having this conversation right now and policy could have changed while we’re talking… so you plan for the worst, and kind of hope for the best.”

As it turns out, it took just over a week for the tariff maths to be upended again – and in a follow-up interview Gaeta was candid about the impact on Renegade’s plans.

He said, “The most difficult part of all of this is that it seems to change from day to day and on a whim. It’s often hard to get solid information in a timely manner. Even when we contact US Customs directly or check their website they don’t have the most recent information.

“Outside of just day to day changes to policy, all this means Renegade will have to evaluate every release carefully. Some releases may be pulled from the schedule entirely if we feel the decrease in margin makes the game too risky.

“Some games may see price increases and others we may be able to absorb the costs for now, or are well stocked so we can take a wait and see approach if things change down the road when it’s time to reprint.

“We will certainly be keeping inventory very tight on games with hefty tariffs. In some cases we are looking to move manufacturing out of China, but the US is not an option, as the factories to make our types of products just don’t exist here.

“We’re also anticipating tariffs being imposed on Europe soon too, so moving to factories there doesn’t seem like a strategy worth pursuing.

“If tariffs increase above where they are today we will likely scale back and further tighten our release schedule. Best case scenario under these circumstances will be that the tax is only a short term thing.

“A long term government tax on our business will mean we likely have to make significant changes to our business. It certainly means we will have less cash available to grow and expand our business.

“When we can grow and expand we hire more full time people, use more freelancers, and create opportunities for more Americans. That will be severely impacted under the current administrations economic policy of taxing American business for goods made overseas.”

Stonemaier Games co-founder Jamey Stegmaier, who wrote an extensive blog post on the potential impact of tariffs last December, told BoardGameWire that while his company could “eat the cost” of a 10% tariff, the new figure would create more significant problems for the business.

He said, “A 20% tariff is a more difficult pill to swallow, as it increases the cost per unit to equivalent of the sky-high freight costs we saw during the pandemic.

“That level of tariff isn’t sustainable for Stonemaier to swallow long term, though in the short term we would avoid passing it on to consumers in the hopes that it’s temporary.”

Stegmaier provided an example of how the company would be impacted if tariffs on China were cranked up again by Trump to reach a 30% level.

He said, “In 2025, a rough estimate is that we’re going to make around 500,000 units of various products for the US gaming community, at an average landed cost of $10 and an average MSRP of $50.

“Instead of us paying $5m to create and import those products, we would pay $6.5m. That’s a $1.5m increase that’s going straight from Stonemaier Games to the US government (to whom we already pay huge amounts of corporate taxes every year).

“At that point, I’d have to imagine that we would need to increase prices, which impacts distributors, retailers, and consumers in the US. It would probably result in fewer games sold, so we would reduce the quantities in print runs that followed, perhaps significantly.”

He added, “I read a post from James Hudson (Druid City Games) about the tariffs, and he shared something I hadn’t thought of: while it’s nice for companies to absorb the costs of tariffs so they don’t impact consumers, it also means that consumers don’t feel the impact of tariffs (and might continue to falsely assume that they’re paid by China, Canada, and Mexico, not US companies).

“He makes a good case for companies to share the cost of tariffs with consumers and be vocal about why the costs are higher, hopefully resulting in a positive impact on the democratic process.”

T Caires, a director at Hachette Boardgames USA, told BoardGameWire the 10% China tariff had already seen the company “tightening the belt” and freezing some contracts, as well as moving forward with investigations into the possibility of US-based manufacturing.

They said, “Basically, anyone that has played any economic resource board game can tell you that the world economy is going to take several rounds to recover from what’s happening, unless the event card triggering these effects is discarded, as we’d say in gaming.

“… The implications on these tariffs and policies are far reaching and not something to be shrugged off or hand waved as easily solvable by just doing X or Y. Business as we know it and the products as we know them are going to have to change, as well as the expectations of costs, timing, and quality.

“We as a society have put a lot of money and time into making Chinese manufacturing what it is for board games, and we cannot just suddenly declare we’ll be able to do the same domestically – we quite literally do not have the machines or skillset here for board gaming. I’ve been to factories in Germany, China, and the US and the investment in quality and skill has been made in those foreign countries, not the US.

“It will take time to develop those skills here and time to get the machines and tools needed. People have been working on building those skills in the US for awhile, for a variety of reasons, but the average consumer is unrealistic about the true cost of a lot of what they purchase, especially when it comes to board games.

“This is an industry made and run by people that want to play games and do it for the love of gaming, not to get rich. There’s a lot of smaller companies that are running very slim on their margins that are going to have some very rough months ahead of them.”

They added, “We stocked as heavily as possible at the end of 2024, just in case, and so we’re stable through Q2. Q3 and Gen Con is where things will start to get tricky. We’re also warning our retailer customers as much as possible. We’re giving them weeks to stock up and even pre-order inventory at the lower prices before we trigger the increases so they can make a bit more margin when we increase the prices. For example, by letting them buy at 50% of the current prices and then sell for the new MSRP in a couple of weeks, they’ll be getting a few extra points, which should help them storm potential decreased customer spending.

“All of our Gen Con releases are on the production timeline – the POs are written, the production scheduled – there’s not much we can do on those aside from bump up the prices to be a little higher than we anticipated.

“But our Q4 releases we’re having to be more conservative with and our 2026 releases, which we are reviewing and signing now, we have to be extremely careful. We’ll definitely be less willing to take risks on products we’re not confident on.”

Chad Elkins from 25th Century Games told BoardGameWire his plans for the year, which involved releases of games including Big Sur, Wine Cellar and Diatoms, were being thrown into disarray by the tariff changes.

He said, “In a lot of ways, these new tariffs are much like the sharp rise in shipping prices we saw during Covid. They blindsided all of us, the main difference during Covid is that the shipping crisis increase once it started was largely predictable enough that you could still plan for it as there was a sightline to the horizon of continued price elevation.

“These tariffs are much harder to navigate any business decisions around when every day you wake up and wonder if the stroke of a pen or ranting in a press conference will continue to change things further. The unhinged volatility of this mess is the most troubling part as it’s nearly impossible to actually implement long term planning.

“No publisher wants to raise prices to afford to bring a game to market, then have the tariffs vanish and you’re stuck with a price point that will put you at a disadvantage in the market. Conversely, there is only so much you can absorb in terms of unit cost increases before you find yourself treading water at best, or losing money because you are upside down with your costing. 

“Publishers who largely sell direct will be able to absorb smaller increments of tariffs because they have more margin to play with. 25th Century is primarily a retail store supporting publisher with our sales mix, which means any unplanned quick drastic change to costs could compress things to an unstable point because those margins have less wiggle room.

“A decision to absorb a 10% tariff believed to be temporary could easily change when things escalate to 20% or 25%, regardless of if they are believed to be temporary or long term. At that point, you simply cannot ignore a change to MSRP any longer and must pass on that higher price to your end consumers on new games being released and even reprints of current titles.”

He added that board game publishers taking the crowdfunding route were potentially in an even stickier situation, given the months – and sometimes years – lag time between costing out a project and being in a position to deliver.

He said, “Any publishers who use crowdfunding are all now wrestling with this dilemma, more especially a creator who has already completed a crowdfunding campaign, but has not yet finished manufacturing and fulfillment. This is a situation where your planned shipping fees and unit costing were set and relayed to your backers, but now the inputs have changed dramatically. Every creator caught in this predicament has a heavy weight on their shoulders in deciding how to handle it, us included.

“No creator wants to come back and say things will be higher with a new “Trump Tax” in the pledge manager for North American backers or that the planned shipping price will need to change. Creators don’t want this even more than backers don’t want it.

“I can only hope those backers will be understanding and supportive as this truly is something that is outside of everyone’s control. For new campaigns launching, if these tariffs are still in place and don’t seem to be leaving in the near future, then you will also see that increase reflected right from the start. This is also not a great place to be in, but it is better than having to pass along those increased unplanned costs after a campaign wraps.”

That sentiment was echoed by Tettix Games founder Judson Cowan, whose Kickstarter campaign for Deep Regrets last summer raised more than £630,000 from almost 14,000 backers.

Cowan has been upfront and direct in his communication with Deep Regrets Kickstarter backers since tariff talk began last November, and that has been reflected in an outpouring of support, suggestions for raising extra funds and offers of financial and logistics help.

He told BoardGameWire, “The tariff situation is so volatile that planning is now nearly impossible. My board games left China mid February, when there were no tariffs in effect. Since then, a 10% tariff has been implemented and now a further 10% tariff has been implemented, meaning between the time the games left port in China and when they will arrive in a week or two, my business has lost about $25,000 that there was no way to plan for.

“The threat of tariffs was there, but numbers like 60% and 35% had been tossed around many times and it was very unclear whether they were empty threats. I’m now worried further tariffs will be implemented with no grace period or warning before the boat ever reaches port and that the whims of an extremely unpredictable administration will continue to damage my ability to do business. The timing for my game, in particular, is especially bad.

“I charged customers for shipping before tariffs were mentioned, and I shipped them after they were applied – I’m covering those costs for this shipment, but in the future I will need to substantially mark up shipping for US customers to cover those costs and remain solvent as a business.

“I expect this to permanently increase the costs of board games in the US, even if the tariffs are removed, since the unpredictability of current political decision-making means tariffs could suddenly reappear with no warning, leaving businesses unable to plan or to cover their costs.

“From now on, those costs will just be passed on to consumers ahead of time. Businesses will need to apply a mark-up to games sold to US customers to cover their risks in hopes of not being caught out by sudden tariffs.

“The damage is already done. As long as this administration remains in place the risk of snap-decisions will persist. I suspect board game prices in the US will not come back down to the levels of 2024 until the current administration turns over.”

Ted Caya, the executive director of operations at Root and Arcs publisher Leder Games, told BoardGameWire that simply raising prices to offset tariffs was a more complex proposition than just deciding whether customers would pay the increased costs.

He said, “We are particularly hesitant to raise MSRP for a couple of reasons. For one, while it is fairly straightforward to raise MSRP, it is a whole other animal to try and lower it back again. Any non-end-user sales you’ve made (to distributors and retailers) will need to be compensated for what essentially became an overcharge for them, assuming they are still holding some of the product.

“Given the speed and unpredictability of how the tariff rates can change, we don’t want to end up in a situation where they suddenly reduce back down and we are left either cleaning up a crediting mess with our B2B clients or are left with our products priced above where we feel is appropriate.

“Pricing for our market has ledges, some of which can be significant, and I think raising MSRP can be more like playing with fire than some might realize. I believe this goes for shipping as well, and trying to just recoup the additional cost in the shipping charge could also be a bad move.

“We already subsidize the actual shipping on almost everything we sell, so if we felt we could charge more we already would be doing it.”

He added that if tariffs were increased again to 30% would inevitably lead to cost cutting in other areas of the business, saying, “This is also where some negotiation/cooperation with our manufacturing partners [comes in]. In many ways we are in this boat together, and it behooves both parties to help with the mitigation efforts.”

Caya said the primary effect of the tariffs on Canada and Mexico on Leder Games would be reciprocal tariffs imposed by those companies, which would put downward pressure on its sales to those regions. “To what degree remains to be seen”, he added.

25th Century’s Elkins added that while shifting manufacturer could be a potential solution for some publishers, the complex logistical nature of shipping board games creates further headaches around those decisions – and could lead to older games going out of print.

He said, “There is only so much you can do to try and shift manufacturers who are willing to work more with you to be aggressive on pricing – they only have so much margin as well. The concept of even switching manufacturers for some publishers is much easier than others.

“If you make one game a year and never reprint it, then sure you can bounce around project to project. But if you have a more expansive catalog, like we do, where you are continually reprinting games alongside the printing of new releases, losing that efficiency with commingling titles into your freight containers has real cost impacts as well.

“So if you get forced to start switching manufacturers for new projects, it could mean other older titles need to go through the operational hurdle of moving them over as well. That’s only if you can even reprint an out of stock title.

“If the new tariff impacts are forcing the end MSRP of a game to increase, decisions need to be made on whether or not the market would even continue to purchase that game at a new higher price point.

“If it is believed they won’t, then you could see some titles remain out of print longer between runs if publishers are deciding to wait and see if these unstable tariffs drop back down again before manufacturing them again.”