Interview
the Trump administration doesn’t always end so amicably and usually with a ten per cent tariff landed upon you. In fact, it is the topic of tariffs that has been presented as the first in three of the biggest threats to the American toy industry of current time. By the time that you read this, the March 1st deadline for negotiation between Trump and Xi Jinping will be drawing to a close, if not extended - and that will be one of the happier scenarios. A threatened fourth round of imposed tariffs - one that will cause the cost of toys in the US to rise 25 per cent - would be the least desirable, because that is the one that will really sting. Not that round three three hasn’t already landed a punch. Folkmanis is a somewhat legendary name among America’s puppet community, having emerged in the 1960s and enjoyed a successful 40 plus years as one of the country’s premiere, family-run puppet manufacturers. Towards the end of last year, the founder of this California based outfit,
Judy Folkmanis, found she would be paying a tariff on the steel used to construct the display racks that her company places in stores across America. A tariff on steel doesn’t make for sensational reading, but it does have a long lasting effect on Folkmanis’ business, particularly when it looks at ways of making up that extra outgoing. The same could be said for the components that go into the US manufacture of Crazy Aaron’s Thinking Putty, or a sound chip in an item belonging to American Plastic Toys. “The fourth round of tariffs, which has been threatened but the administration hasn’t talked much about in the past couple of months, would be devastating to the US toy industry,” says Steve Pasierb, president and CEO of The Toy Association. “If toys became 25 per cent more expensive, it would have a huge impact on the retail market and the toy companies. So we continue to push back on tariffs.” While it does look like the US may be heading towards the March 1st deadline
with some kind of deal with China, it is not lightly that Pasierb tells this year’s international media delegation at a special briefing during the North American International Toy Fair, that “the single biggest piece of uncertainty that exists in the US toy market right now, is tariffs.” “You know,” he tells ToyNews, “companies need to have certainty and have some idea politically and economically where a given country is going, and we haven’t been able to offer that in the US in the last year.” Pasierb and the Toy Association he presides over were quick off the mark to rally against the incremental imposition of tariffs that littered last year. Not only has the president been vocal in his thoughts to the media - labelling it a ‘tax on families and children,’ - but active in the campaigning against them “every step of the way.” He explains: “We as an association have been fighting the tariffs down in Washington DC every step of the way. “We just took a large group of our members and other companies to Wash-
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