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As toy inventors, toy manufacturers and buyers for stores that sell toys met for a four-day annual trade show in New York last weekend, a topic besides which items were destined for holiday wish lists permeated the displays. President Donald Trump had announced days before that he planned to increase the extra tariff he put on Chinese imports in February to 20%. Would he? By Tuesday, the last day of the Toy Fair, attendees had their answer, and the talk about how it would affect the prices of playthings grew more urgent. Nearly 80% of the toys sold in the U.S. are sourced from China, according to the Toy Association, a national industry group that sponsors the show formerly known as the North American International Toy Fair. Many toy makers are now renegotiating prices with retailers and taking a hard look at their products to see if they can cut costs. Greg Ahearn, president and CEO of the Toy Association, said price increases of 15% to 20% are expected on games, dolls, cars, and other toys by the back-to-school shopping season. The price range that U.S. consumers are willing to pay is anywhere from $4.99 to $19.99, leaving little wiggle room to raise prices, he said. Its untenable, Ahearn said, noting that small businesses make up roughly 96% of the American toy industry. Trump also moved forward this week with 25% tariffs on products imported from Canada and Mexico. Some companies have moved some of their manufacturing to Mexico to be closer to the U.S. On Wednesday, though, the president granted U.S. automakers a one-month exemption from the tariffs on the neighboring North American nations. Trump’s changing statements and policies on tariffs have made it challenging for toy companies to plan accordingly. Basic Fun CEO Jay Foreman said he didn’t rush late last year to get shipments of Tonka trucks, Care Bears, and other toys his Boca Raton, Florida-based company produces in China because he wasn’t sure if the 60% tariff on Chinese goods that Trump discussed on the campaign trail would come to pass. If you plan in a chaotic environment, you have a much greater chance of being wrong than being right, Foreman said when interviewed Sunday at his Toy Fair booth. All of Basic Fun’s toy products are made in China except for K’Nex, a construction set made in the U.S., he said. After Trump instead imposed an additional 10% tariff on Chinese goods last month, Foreman said he worked hard to persuade retailers to share some of the cost so he didn’t have to pass it on to consumers. Now that the import duty has doubled, he said he will have to raise prices for many of his items. For example, a Tonka Classic Steel Mighty Dump Truck, which now retails for $29.99, will likely go up to $39.99 as early as the fall, Foreman said. The Toy Association lobbied hard to exempt the toy industry from the 10% to 25% tariffs Trump levied on Chinese goods during his first term. The group lobbied again this time around, trying to educate members of Congress that toy companies can’t replicate the expertise found in Chinese factories. Ahearn noted there’s a lot of sophistication of manufacturing and craftsmanship that has been built up over time over generations in China. The high-skilled and lower-cost labor force that is available in China is not available currently, and it will take this same amount of time to build that up. Some toy companies are looking at ways to avoid raising prices. Steve Rad, CEO of toy maker Abacus Brands, said the Austin-based company considered switching to factories in countries like Cambodia or Vietnam, but concluded they dont have the same level of skills. He does, however, plan to start having one of the companys China-made products manufactured in the United States. Abacus Brands found a Texas factory that said it could produce Pixicade, which converts doodles and drawings into playable video games, at no additional cost. The U.S.-made version is expected to be in stores by August, Rad said. Other Abacus Brands toys are more complex, Rad said, and he doesnt see making them in the U.S. as feasible. Instead, hes exploring whether he can lower costs by cutting some product features. Foreman, of Basic Fun, said he plans to offer new spins on his existing toys to make them look new. Take Mashems, which are soft, water-filled collectibles that feature different licensed characters packaged in small cardboard boxes. Maybe Ill change the color of the box, he said. “Or maybe Ill put it in a plastic container. Some retailers already have received letters from toy suppliers announcing immediate price increases. Richard Derr is the owner of the Learning Express franchise in Lake Zurich, Illinois, and president of the 85-member Learning Express franchise council. He questions if those suppliers are acting in good faith since many of them had sped up deliveries from China ahead of the tariffs. He and other Learning Express franchisees are studying alternatives to suppliers that suddenly want to raise prices, Derr said. He said he isn’t too worried about customers comparing what a toy costs compared with the year before since 65% of his products are new to the market. We are in the era of one day, one thing, one day, two things, and it changes up and down, Derr said. So to put out something now, I think, is just preparing the stew when in fact the stew may not even be cooked.” By Anne D’Innocenzio, AP business writer
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Mexican and Canadian officials are increasingly frustrated by tariff negotiations with the Trump administration, with a lack of clarity over exactly what the U.S. wants making any resolution seem impossible, sources from both countries told Reuters. After implementing across-the-board 25% tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico earlier this week, President Donald Trump on Thursday announced a one-month reprieve for Mexico with an exemption for the North American auto sector also in the works. On Thursday, just after midday Eastern Time, tariffs remained in place for Canada. The on-again, off-again tariffs and the high-level discussions surrounding them have exasperated negotiating teams, according to three Mexican officials and two Canadian sources familiar with negotiations. It’s like “dealing with an angry partner and you dont know what they’re mad about,” one Mexican official. “It’s not clear what they want.” The press person for Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum responded to a request for comment by directing Reuters to Sheinbaum’s public comment on Thursday. In a post on X, Sheinbaum said: “We had an excellent and respectful call,” that respected the “sovereignties” of both countries. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office and the White House both did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Trump based the legal justification for the tariffs on combating fentanyl and illegal immigration, but he and others in his administration often expand the justification to include trade deficits and protecting U.S. industries like autos and lumber. Despite the shared frustration of Mexico and Canada, the two countries have taken distinct tones in public. Sheinbaum has stressed her respect for Trump and the close cooperation with the U.S. Canada has bluntly criticized the chaos. Trudeau on Thursday said Canada will be in a trade war with the United States for “the foreseeable future.” U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called Trudeau “a numbskull.” Trudeau’s foreign minister has been even franker. “We won’t get through this, another psychodrama every 30 days,” Foreign Minister Melanie Joly told business leaders in Toronto earlier this week. “The problem we’ve had is it’s not clear what the American president wants,” she added. “I’ve had conversations with colleagues in Washington saying, ‘Okay, but at the end of the day, what do you guys want?’ And I got the answer, ‘We’re about to know.’ There’s one decision maker in the system. He’s the only one to know.” U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick dismissed the idea that he didn’t know what Trump wants as “fake news” and “so silly” in an interview on Thursday with CNBC. Trump “calls everybody all the time,” Lutnick said. “I speak to him all the time. You’ve got to be kidding me. The president knows exactly what he wants. We know exactly what he wants.” But Canadian and Mexican officials said the lack of clarity over demands as well as uncertainty over whether Trump administration officials in bilateral meetings were actually able to deliver on what they said was making discussions incredibly challenging. The scope of negotiations is not clear, they said, with talks sometimes seeming to be focused on fentanyl and at other times on migration, while on some occasions the focus seemed to be trade deficits. “The U.S. reasons for the tariffs constantly shift, said another Mexican official. “If we can’t identify the problem, we can’t identify the solution.” Emily Green, Jarrett Renshaw, David Ljunggren; writing by Stephen Eisenhammer, Reuters
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Officials in the Western U.S. who warn the public about avalanches are sounding a different type of alarm. They say they’re worried that the Trump administration firing hundreds of meteorologists and other environmental scientists could hinder life-saving forecasts that skiers and mountain drivers rely on. The forecasting work is crucial for skiers and climbers who flirt with danger when they travel through mountain gullies that are prone to slide. Recovery efforts for three victims of a large avalanche near Anchorage, Alaska, were ongoing Thursday, two days after the accident in mountains where forecasters had warned it would be easy to trigger a slide that day because of a weak layer in the deep snow. The forecasts also are used to protect the general public. Transportation officials use them to gauge the risk on well-traveled roads like one in Colorado where a vehicle got pushed off the highway by a slide earlier this month. We save lives and there are people alive today because of the work we do,” said Doug Chabot, who directed the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center in Montana for almost 24 years. “To take funding and to just randomly cut programs, it will affect our ability to save lives. There’s a lot of pieces that will fall apart’ Avalanches kill about two dozen people annually in the U.S. Predicting their likelihood, potential severity and location depends heavily on information provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The information comes in two forms: data-driven models and conversations between avalanche forecasters and National Weather Service meteorologists who can help assess the data. We have our own numerical model, but we cant run that without the work that NOAA is doing, said Ethan Greene, director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, which publishes avalanche forecasts. Without that work, theres a lot of pieces that will fall apart. So far this winter 18 people had been killed by avalanches, most of them in remote areas in Western states. Weather models from NOAA are used by 14 avalanche centers run by the U.S. Forest Service. The Colorado center is largely state funded. Chabot said employees at the federal avalanche centers have so far been exempt from cuts, but officials worry that could change. Shrinking the federal workforce The Trump administration has not disclosed what positions are being lost at NOAA. Former leaders of the agency have said the firings will have wide-ranging negative impacts on flight safety, shipping safety and warning networks for tornados and hurricanes. NOAA has about 13,000 employees. The firings come as billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency shrink a federal workforce that President Donald Trump has called bloated and sloppy. A NOAA spokesperson declined to answer questions from The Associated Press about the potential for the cuts to degrade avalanche forecasting quality. We are not discussing internal personnel and management matters, spokesperson Susan Buchanan wrote in an email. We continue to provide weather information, forecasts and warnings pursuant to our public safety mission. Greene and Chabot said they dont anticipate immediate effects. But if NOAA’s data is weaker, Greene said his center’s forecasts will be more uncertain. We will probably look at the same things that were looking at and see that theyre not working as well as they were, he said. Dangerous layers of snow On a mountainside near Leadville, Colorado, this week, Greene dug a pit into the snow and scooped out snow crystals that he scattered across a plastic blue card. It’s so beautiful, he said, referring to a layer of snow turned to ice crystals, which under certain conditions can create weak layers prone to avalanche. Such surveys are an essential part of forecasting and so is data on weather, which impacts snow and helps drive avalanche risk. In nearby Frisco, Colorado, light snow fell in the parking lot at the Mayflower Gulch trailhead, where college students Joseph Burgoyne and his friend Michael Otenbaker from Michigan donned snow shoes and strapped skis to a backpack before heading up a mountain trail. Burgoyne said its scary to see headlines on social media sites about skiers who were carried and buried by avalanches Its serious terrain, and those reports, they can save lives,” Burgyone said of the avalanche forecasts. “Everybody just wants to have a good time. Going fast is fun. Finding deep snow is fun, but theres serious dangers behind that. Brittany Peterson and Matthew Brown, Associated Press
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