NEW YORK – When President Donald Trump told parents last year to buy their kids only two dolls instead of 30, an executive at Miami-based doll maker JC Toys printed the quote out on his desk.
Trump’s comments were a poke in the eye in an already tough 2025 for a toy industry still struggling to contend with a 145 percent tariff on China, where a vast majority of them manufacture toys.
As toy makers gathered here last weekend for the International Toy Fair, they expressed cautious optimism that 2026 is going to bode better for their industry than last year. While overall sales ticked up in 2025 by 6 percent, some smaller companies could not ride out the increased tariffs, according to the National Toy Association CEO Greg Ahearn.
They’re still on edge that the president, who told Americans to buy fewer of their products last year, could quickly reignite that firestorm by raising tariffs on China again. Richard Wieczorek, the vice president of JC Toys, said his company may be comfortable now, but, “three weeks from today, it could be a different story.”
Jay Foreman, the CEO of Basic Fun!, which produces high-profile toys like Care Bears, Littlest Pet Shop and Lincoln Logs, expressed some optimism about 2026, but said one of the toy industry’s biggest unknowns is the top resident of the White House.
“The only factor that my colleagues in the industry are all worried about is the volatility of the president and members of his administration,” Foreman said. “Any day Mr. Trump could wake up on the wrong side of the bed and pull the rug out from under the current trade relationships. It’s really challenging to plan for the year under these conditions. I feel like there is a sword on a string dangling over my business and have for over a year.”
When Trump imposed his 145 percent tariffs on China in April, it sent shockwaves through the industry, temporarily shutting down business for companies that rely almost entirely on manufacturing their toys in the Asian superpower. It squeezed margins for big brands and wiped out smaller toymakers that live order-to-order.
Sandwiched between LEGOs, Calico Critters and 800 other toy stands at the Javits Convention Center last weekend, Foreman looked back at last year as a “low-key war on toys.”
When the 145 percent tariff was enacted, “everything just shut down," Foreman said. "You could not risk bringing any merchandise into the country. … It really paralyzed everybody.”
White House spokesperson Kush Desai pushed back, arguing that “access to cheap imports of Chinese toys is not prosperity.
“It’s American workers being able to support their families and communities because they have good jobs that pay well and provide dignity,” he said in a statement. “This [is] what the Trump administration’s America First agenda of tariffs, deregulation, tax cuts, and domestic energy is unleashing with new trade deals and trillions in investments to make and hire in America.”
When Trump launched his first trade war with China in 2018, he imposed sweeping tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars in Chinese imports, a move aimed at countering Beijing’s intellectual property practices and shrinking the U.S. trade deficit. But the White House carved out exemptions for certain products — including many toys — after intense lobbying from retailers and manufacturers who warned that higher duties would drive up holiday prices.
This time around, the National Toy Association engaged with the Trump administration, according to Ahearn. But no exemption came.
“They had a good, sympathetic ear. They understood the value of toys. They understood the desire for us to keep toys affordable and accessible for kids,” Ahearn said, as Strawberry Shortcake and Bluey mascots walked down the aisles of the convention center.
But for some toy makers, the damage was done.
“2025 was a bad year for us. 2024 was a record year for us,” Foreman said of his business. “We were expecting to grow from where we ended in 2024 by 10, 15 percent at least. We ended up losing 20 percent of our business in 2025. … We lost eight, nine weeks of shipping during the Liberation Day period. Nobody was shipping anything from China.”
With tariffs on China falling to roughly 35 percent as of November, there’s a slight feeling of relief — for now. The toy association’s weekly tariff calls are now just bi-weekly.
“We’re cautiously optimistic,” Ahearn said. “The large- and the medium-sized companies have done an exceedingly good job in a very, very difficult 2025 of riding that out and setting a new norm. The folks that still have the greatest challenge though, are the small companies. … Unfortunately, the ones that could afford it the least, were impacted by it the most. Some did not make it through.”
Aside from the tariffs, Trump and his senior aides at several points in the last year have directly said that consumers should buy fewer toys.
Trump admitted that his tariffs on Chinese imports could lead to fewer toys on U.S. shelves and higher prices. “Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls,” he said. “So maybe the two dolls will cost a couple bucks more than they would normally.”
Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News that for families, “rather than giving a toy for a birthday, for a holiday, they can contribute to these [Trump] accounts,” referring to the Trump-backed savings initiative that would allow parents to set up tax-advantaged investment accounts for their children.
“Who’s not going to buy toys for their children?” said Steven Meyer, who runs the design department at Mary Meyer Corporation, which has made stuffed toys since 1933, echoing a sentiment across the convention center.
“A little kid does not really have an emotional attachment to ‘Oh, you just put $50 in my Trump account.’ That’s so abstract, they have no idea what that means. I can’t imagine that that's a substitute for a toy for a child,” he added, standing behind stuffed lambs, elephants and dogs.
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