Hasbro Sets Game Plan Ahead of Possible Tariffs

"Nerf guns. Monopoly board games. G.I. Joes. Some of Hasbro's bestselling toys could get pricier if President-elect Donald Trump implements stiff tariffs on Chinese imports.

One of the U.S.'s largest toy makers said it is negotiating with suppliers and considering design changes ahead of potential new levies. "We've been preparing for many months for any contingency," Chris Cocks, Hasbro's chief executive, said in an interview.

The threat of new taxes on toy imports comes amid a long-term shift in the industry away from China, spurred in part by rising labor costs in that country. 

Hasbro, Barbie-maker Mattel and others have spent years trying to make fewer toys and games in China by relocating to factories in other countries, including Vietnam and India.

New levies might make that shift more of a necessity, but Hasbro's efforts demonstrate that it could be difficult to speed up.

Across industries, U.S. companies have been diversifying their supply chains away from China in recent years, prodded in part by tariffs implemented during Trump's first term. The Biden administration left many of those levies in place and layered on some new ones, intensifying the pressure on companies to find alternatives.

Makers of everything from steel and semiconductors to auto parts are rejiggering supply lines to source components from other countries. 

Sharpie and Yankee Candle maker Newell Brands, for example, is moving more factory work to the U.S. -- the desired result of the tariffs for both administrations. 

Some executives also acknowledge that prices will go up as a result of trade barriers being erected across regions.

Hasbro's current target is for about 20% of its U.S. sales to come from China-made products within four years, down from about 40% today. The challenges the company has faced in achieving a long-held goal underline the pressure facing toy makers.

Cocks, who became CEO in 2022, is taking up Hasbro's decadelong goal of reducing the company's reliance on China. 

While lower-cost locations are easy to find, switching to a new factory with similar product-quality and safety standards can be a challenge in the toy industry, analysts said.

Unlike in some industries, automation has yet to make major strides in parts of the toy-making process. Assembly for many toys still relies on skilled workers to put together the latest action figure or hand-paint details.

Shifting to a different country requires training a new generation of craftspeople. Smaller factories in South and Southeast Asian countries also might not produce enough units to easily replace Chinese facilities, UBS analyst Arpine Kocharian said.

Hasbro has an easier time relocating factories than the rest of the toy industry because the company outsources most of its production, Kocharian said.

During the presidential campaign, Trump, a Republican, talked about placing tariffs of 60% or more on imports from China, up to 100% on some imports from Mexico, and 10% to 20% on all imports. 

Since winning, he has told allies he wants Robert Lighthizer, who helped implement his tariff policies in his first term, as the new administration's trade czar.

There is still uncertainty around how the tariffs will apply to Hasbro and the toy industry. In the round of levies imposed during Trump's first presidency, toys and some other consumer goods were spared.

Hasbro's shift away from China is part of a $750 million cost-cutting push that includes negotiating lower prices from suppliers or changing designs to make them cheaper to build, such as Jenga blocks that now use a single type of wood. The change lowered costs and had the added benefit of making the pieces slide more smoothly out of a Jenga tower, Cocks said.

In addition to supply-chain improvements, the company is cutting its head count. Layoffs announced late last year affected nearly 20% of its workforce, and the company has discontinued unprofitable or redundant toy variants.

Hasbro executives said the company is on track to hit its cost-reduction targets and offset falling revenue amid an industrywide slump in toy sales. The company's share price has risen 25% this year.

Role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons and the card game Magic: The Gathering have generated increasing sales and profit for Hasbro in recent years. Those products tend to come with higher profit margins for Hasbro, meaning it makes sense to produce them in the U.S. The company said in 2023 that Magic has become its first billion-dollar brand in terms of annual sales.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government has been pushing for the country to graduate from being a hub for lower-cost work, such as toy making.

"Toy manufacturing is not a high priority, and a continued migration of these industries to South and Southeast Asia would not be viewed by the Chinese leadership as a major loss," said Stephen Olson, visiting fellow focusing on trade at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

"The $64,000 question is what level any of Trump's tariffs are actually set at -- he's indicated a fairly wide range in different comments, so it's still a bit of an X-factor," Olson said." [1]

1. Hasbro Sets Game Plan Ahead of Possible Tariffs. Glickman, Ben; Khan, Natasha.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 18 Nov 2024: A.1.