It will be beautiful. Hasbro will make all their toys, fantastic toys by the way, in factories in America. The best factories, the best.
Hasbr-uh-oh - Business and Tariffs Discussion
- Thread starter Thylacine 2000
- Start date
I believe Hasbro/Takara moved production to Vietnam well before the first Trump term; I'm not sure if they've moved more out of China since. The first-tarm trade war stuff seems to have kicked in about partway through it, and then there was some noise toward the end about banning TikTok (which then got forgotten about until Biden wanted to do it, at which point TikTok announced that Trump then "saved" it post election in one of the cringier things I've ever seen.)
But yeah, there's no spinning this current situation to be anything other than that Breakfast Club thing where Vernon keeps increasing the number of detention days as an ineffectual threat. And the backtracking (the latest as of the moment being exempting smartphones and some other parts from tariffs, after the sketchy buy-the-dip 90-day pause) is as destructive as the tariffs themselves.
How exactly do you get billed for the tariff if you're the one importing something? Do they send you a bill in the mail or something, because I don't think UPS, FedEx or even the USPS has my phone number or e-mail.
This is a big part of what I want to know too. In my house, mail tends to get misplaced and can sometimes be lost for weeks or months. I really don't want to see stuff I buy get destroyed because I didn't realize I had a bill waiting for me wherever my kids tossed it.
Last edited:
Around the time of the Great Recession of 2008, China started to experience a surge of growth in an expanding middle class. Driven largely by increased labor wages, this expansion was a significant factor in the big “China push” by Hollywood after the massive numbers done by films such as Avatar.
Hasbro tried various means of trimming costs to offset the increased cost of labor, which likely factored in the “splitting” the kid and collector segments in 2013 across most of their brands. However, they ultimately began shifting production to Vietnam (along with India, which started right about the same time as well) for their more labor intensive items. Titans Return was the first where I think the majority of the collector product came from Vietnam. Donald Trump’s Trade War in his first term simply accelerated Hasbro’s long term plans of diversifying their production sources.
As it stands, IIRC, Chinese produced items still constitute about half of Hasbro’s product stack (45-55% are the numbers rattling around in my sleep deprived brain at the moment).
Chris Cocks has said that one of the game plans he's looking at is consolidating Hasbro's supply lines. They are manufacturing in more countries than they need, and using more shipping companies than they need. It made sense to not have all their eggs in one basket, but they can slim down to absorb some of the tariff costs.
But they do know where you live.
I thought that was implied by asking if they'd mail me a bill.
Keep in mind these tariffs are only relevant for the US market. They can still ship goods manufactured in China to the rest of the world, easy-peasy.
Then another letter in the mail the next day, but sent two weeks earlier, saying that since you didn't respond, the package has already been destroyed. Also you owe $5 for the postage for both letters. Bitch.
And they'll have to ramp that up more and likely charge more to offset the losses elsewhere.
But it's so hard to gauge anything at this point because the people making the situation volatile are so volatile.
Further elaboration on the overall industry effects of the tariffs, with additional statements from Basic Fun! CEO Jay Foreman and MGA CEO Isaac Larian. Larian’s comments, in particular, point to how ”Americans don’t want to work in factories”, and tariffs may even force him to lay off staff at his Ohio Little Tikes factory.
Unfortunately, whether Americans want to work in factories or not is irrelevant to the current powers-that-be. THEY want you to work in factories and they're taking away any incentive that might have made it easier for you to not work in a factory if you want to make a living.
The world's largest consumer base suddenly tariffing some of the world's largest manufacturing bases will have a domino effect on everyone else. There's no escaping that.
This is particularly infuriating because this was a problem that was solved, arguably in the 1800s and at the very least since 1945-1946. None of this was necessary and all of it was easily preventable.
But we're all going to have to hope that somehow this damage is fixable because of one moron blarg'ing his way through a presidency.
And that's as close to P&R as I'm gonna get.
Well... maybe a bit more. It's funny how he's already "paused" most of his tariff measures multiple times and now he says electronics are going to be exempt.
For a guy touted as being the "no bs tell it like it is" guy he's acting pretty bitch-made right now and I hope he caves completely for the sake of everyone else (and our plastic robot hobby).
