Chinese Tariffs Lifted... For Now. What Does This Mean For the Game Industry?

This week the US President announced that the tariffs on Chinese imports would be reduced from the 145% that they have been at since April 2, 2025. On May 12th the US President announced that the tariffs will be reduced down to 30%. This is still a high tariff compared to January of 2025 where the import tariffs on Chinese board game imports to the US was at 0%.

This continues the unpredictability of the price of importing games from China where most games are produced for the US market. The current tariff at 30% is a pause on the 145% tariff for 90 days. Having stated that this is a 90 pause dose not change the math for a lot of publishers and store operators. It would be really hard to manufacture a game and have it shipped to the US in 90 days. If the ship arrived 91 days later and the tariffs went up again it could have devastating affects, especially for small publishers.

games that were ready to ship on April 2nd could be shipped now at the 30% rate but that would be a gamble

The shipping costs are also starting to rise so this could add to publishers decisions to hold off on shipping a new game to the US. Its possible that some of the games that were ready to ship on April 2nd could be shipped now at the 30% rate but that might be a gamble for publishers at this time. So for now we think that its likely that most publishers are going to wait this out to see what happens. The knock on affect from waiting is that there will be less games available for the holiday season at the end of the year. That could possibly cause some further contraction in the board game industry.

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