Tariffs and Tabletop Games
As you probably know, US President Donald Trump has declared an "international emergency" and used it to justify large tariffs (taxes) on goods from America's largest trading partners -- Canada, Mexico, China -- starting tomorrow. The biggest effects of this action will be felt by our whole country by high prices on essentials like food, fuel, and raw materials for agriculture, industry, and construction. But it's also going to have a big impact on tabletop games, since those are manufactured all over the world. Over the decades, Atlas Games has partnered with suppliers in Canada, China, Taiwan, Lithuania, the UK, Belgium, Poland, and India, as well as the United States. Supply chains are a complicated, interconnected web.
I've been following the unfolding situation closely, since it directly affects our projects in process and our plans for future reprints and new releases. Unfortunately, there's confusion and a distinct lack of clear guidance at this point. While Canada's announcement of tariffs they're levying in response clearly states that goods already en route to Canada aren't subject to them, the Trump Administration has been contradictory on how and when US tariffs will actually be applied.
For example, two 40-foot shipping containers filled with our new game Vicious Gardens arrived in Seattle on Saturday. These games are on US soil, but they haven't yet cleared customs. We don't know if, when they do, we may be handed a tax bill equal to 10% of their value. Similarly, the plushies for our Enigma Kickstarter -- adorable frankenteddy Grogar and the huggable steampunk d20 die, both made with recycled materials -- are already sailing to the United States and so are in tax limbo at the moment.
We also need to place orders NOW to reprint some of our popular titles. The Pops & Bejou game CULTivate is now published by Atlas Games. It's out of stock, but we've had to delay the reprint because of the lack of clarity about these import taxes. During the election campaign, Trump threatened that tariffs on Chinese-made goods could be as high as 60% to 100%.
An even bigger concern for us is our top-selling game, Gloom. Gloom is printed in Taiwan, and we are SO PROUD that our manufacturing partner found a way to use recycled plastic for the most recent reprint of the core game. The game is in stock now, but we expect the supply to run out in the coming months, so we should already be ordering a reprint. However, given the threats of across-the-board punitive taxes on all of America's global trading partners, we're concerned that between placing an order and receiving goods, we could find ourselves subject to a tax of 10% to 20%, or much higher, on anything made outside the United States, based on recent news reports.
We just can't reasonably absorb these kinds of taxes without it affecting our pricing. That means we'll unfortunately have to pass the costs on to our customers -- wholesalers, retailers, and direct consumers. At the moment we're still in "wait and see" mode, but I want to provide fair warning of a potential Tariff Recovery Surcharge that we may need to add to affected goods. We'll also be monitoring costs in general, as the tariffs are likely to lead to a spike in our winter heating bills, transportation costs, and other overhead in the coming weeks and months; and that may lead to general price increases in addition to tariff-specific surcharges on particular items. It's not something we want to do, but we don't have much choice. Thank you for understanding our situation.
-John Nephew
Atlas Games President