Tag Donald Trump

Trump tariffs putting tens of thousands of board game industry jobs at risk, GAMA says, as it joins second anti-tariffs lawsuit it likens to “a sledgehammer” rather than “a scalpel”

Donald Trump's emergency tariffs are an "existential crisis" to board game companies and threaten tens of thousands of jobs in the industry, the Game Manufacturer's Association has said, amid joining its second lawsuit fighting the US President's ability to unilaterally impose the import charges.

“Board games are about to get more expensive”: Arcane Wonders president Robert Geistlinger on tariffs, razor-thin margins and the math of producing games

The board game industry has been awash with discussion about the potentially crippling effect of tariffs for several months now, with publishers, distributors and manufacturers all scrabbling to prepare for a leap in the cost of importing games to the US. Chief among the issues is the uncertainty surrounding the situation - tariffs of up to 100% on imports from China, where the vast majority of board games are made, were being talked about by then President-elect Donald Trump last November, stoking fears of a “great collapse” of the US board game industry. So far those tariffs have only reached 10%, but ongoing sabre-rattling from Trump and tit-for-tat tariffs on US goods introduced by China have created an unpredictable trading environment. In this article for BoardGameWire, Robert Geistlinger, president of US board game major Arcane Wonders, explains how even a 10% tariff rate will have an outsized effect on publishers already working on razor-thin margins.