Wall Street Journal Details Hasbro’s Planning Around Potential Tariffs

There was an article this weekend in the Wall Street Journal reflecting Hasbro’s efforts to diversify or move toy production, especially in the light of the threat of tariffs on Chinese goods.

While toys were exempt from Chinese tariffs during the first Trump presidential term, Hasbro has been working to move toy production to other places like India (their goal is having only 20% of products coming from there, down from a current 40%). Of course, with the movement of production to India and southeast Asia comes its own difficulties, including quality control, safety standards, and training an entirely new base of craftspeople, since some parts of toy production simply can’t be automated.

Ultimately, we’ll have to wait and see if Hasbro ends up having to deal with tariffs. In the meantime, they’ll continue reorganizing the supply chain in a continuing effort to cut costs, in addition to making things more “politics-proof”.