The US Court of International Trade has judged that there is no basis in American law for many of the Trump administration’s tariff orders, effectively eliminating them. This will be welcome, but possibly temporary, relief for the US board games industry, where business leaders have predicted ruin since unprecedented tariffs were first levied on Chinese imports.
The stay of execution may not last, as the President has already filed an appeal in the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, DC. If that court upholds the original ruling, the next stop will be the Supreme Court.
The ruling strikes down two kinds of tariffs the President has set via executive order: Trafficking Tariffs, which affect imports from Mexico and Canada; and Worldwide and Retaliatory Tariffs, which put a general 10% duty on all worldwide imports to the US, and go as high as 125% on imports from China. That’s the part relevant to US board gamers, since firms making the best board games at prices customers can afford do so with Chinese manufacturing partners.
When tariffs on China were first announced at the start of April, board game publishers warned they must hike prices to remain profitable, and went to great lengths explaining the math to a sometimes sceptical public. Final Frontier Games and Greater Than Games both announced layoffs and closures soon after.
By April 24, board game manufacturer Stonemaier games had launched a lawsuit suing the President – that case is still proceeding, and isn’t what the Trade Court has delivered a judgement on.
As April ended, troubled gaming giant CMON laid off staff and froze development of all future board games, citing pressure from tariffs as the main cause. Tariffs with China were dropped to 30% on May 12 for 90 days, which the Chief Operating Officer at Cephalofair – the firm behind best-in-class dungeon crawler board game Gloomhaven – called “the bare minimum step to avoid pandemic-level trade disruption“.
The court judgment is available online. If you haven’t read one before, they’re relentless documents, citing laws and previous court judgments that date as far back as the founding fathers, explaining the court’s reasoning. The Trump Administration has been claiming that the President is allowed to set tariffs without limits – ordinarily something only the Senate could do – because of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The Court rules this isn’t the case.
The three judges who gave the unilateral judgment are Timothy Reif, appointed to the role by Trump; Jane Restani, appointed by Ronald Reagan; and Gary Katzman, appointed by Barack Obama.
If you’d like to get into the weeds of the court judgment with Wargamer, or if you’re simply glad that your Kickstarters might arrive without a 125% extra import fee to pay, come and join us in the official Wargamer Discord server.
A stated aim of tariff policy is to encourage manufacturing in America. To find out if that’s likely to work for the tabletop gaming industry, Wargamer interviewed CEO Daniel Block of American miniature making firm Best Hobby, which has just opened its first manufacturing centre in the USA. You can read the full interview here.
Source: Wargamer
