The Official "Damned Trump" Thread: Phase II

[Angrboda]

Mr. Trump’s policies are also complicating decisions for smaller American businesses. Brenden McMorrow, co-founder of Move2Play, a toymaker based in Torrance, Calif., said the company built all of its products in China since it started about nine years ago. But it began to consider factories in Vietnam or India to protect against Chinese import tariffs.

In Vietnam, it found that the factories run by Chinese companies using materials from China were not much cheaper. Instead, it decided to try a test run of manufacturing one of its toys in India — a decision that Mr. McMorrow said looks better with the lofty tariff imposed on Vietnam. It studied whether it could manufacture in the United States, but he said that the costs were roughly five times higher than in China.

And despite the higher cost of tariffs, he doesn’t see U.S. production as any more viable now.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/03/busin...ction.html