2026 Top 100 Importers & Exporters
“ Our category is not recession-proof, but it is recession-resistant,” Ahearn said.“ It’ s the last thing that parents and caregivers will pull back on.”
Ahearn estimates manufacturers absorbed roughly two-thirds of the higher tariffs imposed by the Trump administration to shield their customers from price hikes, while suppliers absorbed the other third.
“ Consumers maybe picked up 5 % or so at the most,” he said.“ Manufacturers looked very selectively at which products could support a price increase.”
Instead, toymakers“ redesigned” their supply chains to account for the rapid changes in tariff levels, Ahearn said. Potential refunds of tariffs paid under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act( IEEPA) will bolster toymakers and retailers, even as they brace for existing Section 122 tariffs of 10 % through July, and the possibility of new tariffs resulting from ongoing Section 301 investigations.
“ Tariffs on toys fluctuated incredibly over a short period of time given that development of toys takes two years on average. They went from 30 % to 70 % before settling at 30 % for most of last year,” he said, adding that he doesn’ t“ believe tariffs will go beyond 30 %, even with” Section 301 tariffs.
Gina Goetter, CFO and COO at Hasbro, pegged the company’ s tariff costs at $ 70 million for 2025. However,“ supply chain productivity nearly offset the cost of tariffs,” including manufacturing diversification efforts, she said during Hasbro’ s Feb. 10 earnings call. The company is forecasting $ 150 million in cost savings from supply chain initiatives in 2026.
“ Tariff costs will be relatively flat year-over-year in the back half [ of this year ], with much of the incremental cost landing in the front half of the year,” Goetter said.
In Mattel’ s Feb. 10 earnings call, CEO Ynon Kreiz said the toymaker’ s 6 % revenue growth in 2025 underperformed expectations due to“ uncertainty in US trade dynamics that affected retailer ordering patterns.”
“ After two challenging quarters where US retailers delayed orders, there was a significant acceleration in orders through most of the fourth quarter,” Kreiz said.“ December, however, ended up growing less than anticipated in the US, and our full-year results finished below expectations.”
Still made in China
The choice to keep prices relatively stable inevitably impacted toymakers’ margins, forcing some companies to lay off staff and others to shut down.
“ Our members are made up of 90 % small businesses,” Ahearn said.“ Some of those went out of business, whether small retailers or manufacturers. The largest companies were getting creative and driving units. They looked at
Manufacturers and suppliers only passed an estimated 5 % of higher tariff cost on to consumers last year. Shutterstock. com the way they were manufacturing; they looked at partnerships with retailers and adjusted on the fly to be able to hold price inflation to reasonable levels.”
Part of“ getting creative” meant reducing their reliance on China as the dominant source of imports, but there is only so much capacity for toymaking in alternative markets.
China’ s share of the US containerized toy import market slipped to 75.8 % in 2025 after holding steady between 83 % and 84 % since the COVID-19 pandemic. Vietnam was the primary beneficiary of diversification away from China, growing its share to 10.6 % last year from 6.1 % in 2024.
“ Manufacturers looked very selectively at which products could support a price increase.”
However, Ahearn said it would take at least a decade before manufacturers in Vietnam could produce toys at the same quality and quantity as China in the best-case scenario. Other markets in Asia, as well as Mexico and the US, likewise lack the necessary expertise and scale to wrest significant volume away from China.
“ That’ s a skill base that needs to be rediscovered in the US,” he said.
Toymakers also learned not to overreact to individual developments during last year’ s tariff rollercoaster.
“ As tariffs rates changed, those that tried to get ahead of the curve because they had facilities in India and Vietnam and Mexico, they moved their production forecasts to India, only to discover India’ s tariff is 50 % and China’ s is now 30 %,” he said of a mid-2025 situation where the Trump administration imposed higher tariffs on India.
Looking ahead to the rest of 2026, Ahearn said toy importers will be selling into a“ pretty uncertain geopolitical and macroeconomic market,” in which an extended war in the Middle East could further increase manufacturing and transportation costs for shippers while dampening consumer spending.“ Petroleum and oil are in everything,” he said.“ That being a volatile component has everyone worried, in terms of the cost of components and movement of goods. But having come through the last year... we don’ t think the things that are driving growth are going to slow down, because they are built into people’ s lives.”
email: eric. johnson @ spglobal. com
38 Journal of Commerce | May 4, 2026 www. joc. com