I’m doing my part as a patriotic American in national security crisis related to Chinese cardboard. Or maybe it’s a crisis caused by excessive Dutch innovation related to fast food simulators. Or alternatively, the crisis may be in Canadian e-commerce. Likely all three, possibly just two, but definitely at least one.
How can I be so sure? Well, as I understand it, under the U.S. Constitution, only Congress can levy a tax, which includes all tariffs, which are defined as taxes on imported goods.[1] The way a tariff (import tax) works is if an American business or consumer chooses to purchase a good from outside the country, Congress can impose a tax, which the US importer (that’s me in this story, in case you’re confused) has to pay. So “import tax” and “tariff” are perfect synonyms, and I might switch between the two terms, but just keep that definition in mind, and you won’t get confused.
On March 13, 2024, I purchased a Dutch-designed board game called “Food Chain Magnate: The Ketchup Mechanism & Other Ideas,” which is an expansion to the somewhat successful game “Food Chain Magnate.” The designers are a pair of Netherlanders named Jeroen Doumen and Joris Wiersinga, who are the joint geniuses behind the Dutch board game company, Splotter Spellen. If you’d like to learn about Food Chain Magnate, I’ve written about how devilishly difficult this game can be, even though there is zero luck involved and the game is essentially about picking the right mix of fast food, advertising, and prices, to sell more pizzas, burgers, and lemonade than your fellow wannabe fast-food magnates.
When I decided to purchase this game expansion, it was out of print, but Splotter was in the process of a new print run, and I wanted to make sure I got a copy when it came out again. I found it for sale from a Canadian retailer I’ve often purchased from called Board Game Bliss. They offer competitive prices, and the shipping from Canada is often the same price as shipping from the East Coast of the US. The game’s price was $CAN93.87 which on March 13, 2024, equated to about $US69. Nice.
When I purchased this game last year, a law was on the books, enacted by Congress, saying that when a customer buys less than $800 worth of stuff in one order (the so-called de miminis exception), there was no import tax at all.[2] There was another law on the books saying that if goods are being imported into the United States “in such a way as to threaten to impair national security,” then the President could adjust the import tax in response.[3] But no such national emergency had been declared, as far as I knew, related to Dutch-designed, Canadian-sold food-related board games. And so, like some sort of early-stage board gaming Martin Niemöller,[4] I did not feel any need to worry.
Time passed, as it tends to do, and the board game reprint ETA kept on slipping into the future, and frankly, I’d forgotten I’d ordered the game. As 2024 turned into 2025, a new President came to power in the United States, and that was when I found out that, entirely unbeknownst to me, there was a national security crisis regarding various goods being imported into the United States. Canada was a culprit, as was the European Union (of which the Netherlands is a member), and especially China, and so the President, as authorized when U.S. national security is at risk, levied a tax on any American importing goods from these three countries.
Again, I’d lost track that I even purchased this, since by March of 2025, it had been an entire year since I’d bought that game. Then I got an email from my friends at Board Game Bliss. They were very upfront about the whole thing.
Hi Andrew,
Great news! Your Pre-Order copy of “Food Chain Magnate: The Ketchup Mechanism & Other Ideas” has arrived. Thank you for your patience and support in pre-ordering with us.
Kindly confirm if you would like us to proceed with the shipment. By doing so, you acknowledge and accept the possibility of additional import charges—potentially up to 145% of the order value—which would be payable upon receipt.
Alternatively, we can cancel your order upon request, or we can hold it for the time being should a new agreement extend the “De Minimis” exemption.
Since the only exception I know of to the law that says that goods under $800 can be imported tax-free is when something about the item being important would “threaten to impar national security,” this is how I know that the fact that I paid a tax to bring in my $69 game was just my small part to help stave off a national security crisis. A small price to pay for liberty, no?
And indeed, I thought it was going to be a small price. Maybe zero, maybe around $21, I wasn’t sure, but that was my best bet. I will admit at this point that I am an economist, and while I do not study the economics of imports, I had a dangerous amount of knowledge about how tariffs are supposed to work. Namely, as I understood it, U.S. tariffs are a tax paid when a U.S. importer purchases goods from a specific country of origin, and that tax is supposed to be calculated based on the cost of manufacture of the product. That means, in normal circumstances, the fact that a consumer in the U.S. might buy a shirt made in Vietnam for $50 does not mean that the importer of that shirt paid an import tax based on a $50 retail price, but instead paid based on the cost to purchase the product from Vietnam, which as a rough guide can be around 20% of the the final price, or in this case $10. So a 50% tariff on a $50 shirt (that costs $10 to make) would not be $25, but just $5.
I did not know the country of manufacture of the game, because some Dutch board games are manufactured in the European Union, but I did have a suspicion (one which turned out to be correct) that this particular Canadian-sold, Dutch-designed game might have been manufactured in China. Since I had paid 69 U.S. Dollars for the game, and I knew Chinese manufactured costs typically run about 20% of retail, I was thinking the Chinese cost of manufacture was maybe around $15 and so even at 145% tariff, I was looking at something in the ballpark of a $21 import tax. So fine, I told them to go ahead and ship it.
I don’t know if you can remember back to the Spring of 2025, but see if this corresponds with your memory—the tariff policies of the United States were in a great deal of flux at the time. I had heard the de minimis exception to the Tariff Act had been suspended by the President because of a national security crisis, but then, soon thereafter, I heard that the national security crisis had itself been suspended for 90 days. I was happy to pay my $21, but I was also relieved that this tax had been held in abeyance for a few months, allowing me to enjoy this commercial product free of an import tax.
The game came to me soon thereafter. And no one asked me to sign for it or to pay a tariff in order to get my good, and, hey, see, they suspended the tariff on small purchases, so I was fine. No extra tax.
Except, well, that was not the end of the process. Like two or three weeks later, I got an invoice (dated May 20, 2025) from FedEx Logistics, Inc. of Memphis, TN, for the sum of $162.67. This was not the $21 tax I expected, nor was it the $0 tax that I actually thought I owed in May 2024 when I ordered the game or in May 2025 when I got the game during what I thought was a suspension of the national security threat-driven suspension of the de minimis exception to the 1930 Tariff Act. I couldn’t even figure out how the heck any sort of tariff could get to $162.67 on what I’d bought, but it sure was not what I thought I was getting myself into.
According to the invoice, I actually paid three separate tariffs.
First, I paid a 7.5% tariff based on the fact that had the gall to purchase anything from China. And from the amount I was charged, I could tell they thought I’d paid someone in China $102, since $102 * 7.5% = $7.65, which is what I got charged. And then I also paid a 20% duty, which I understand was a new tariff the President of the United States had imposed because of the national security crisis this board game represented. And again, 20% of $102 is $20.40, so at this point, at least I knew they thought I had sent a little over $100 to China.
And then there was the third tariff, which bore this little flag “RECIP” which I understood to be an indication that this was a reciprocal tariff levied on my purchase because the Chinese gov’t apparently was taxing the import of American soybeans. Anyway, again at this magical price of $102, my bill was $127.50.
Eventually, on the form I did find that someone named Susan I. Marok, MD had declared on May 23, 2025 that the item in question was worth $102. So that’s where the price came from. I am not sure why a doctor had been consulted, but Dr. Marok apparently really likes Splotter games and figured that even though I’d paid $69, $102 was a better number to use.
I want to be very, very clear here. I did not send $102 to China, directly or indirectly. I had paid $69 to a Canadian company that purchased a game from a Dutch company, which manufactured the game in China, and had paid something on the order of $15 to someone in China. $102 never entered the picture. Now, if we use Canadian dollars, I had paid CAD$94, which with shipping had totaled CAD$108, but I don’t quite know why either of those numbers would matter anyway, since the tax was levied on the US value.
Anyway, this totals $155.55, but the invoice did not stop there. I also got charged $2.62 for something generically labelled “Other Fees” (but which elsewhere was described as a “Merchandise Processing Fee”). On top of that FedEx added a $4.50 “Disbursement Fee,” which I guess is what they are charging me for paying Uncle Sam the taxes and getting me to pay them afterwards.
Today, after wondering exactly who I should write to or call to try to get everyone to agree that something had gone wrong, I decided it was my patriotic duty to pay the patriotic duty on board games. Dutch-designed games of Chinese manufacture are streaming over the Canadian border, and sure, it’s only like $15 of Chinese commerce, but paying $162.67 is the sort of sacrifice that every American should pay to ensure that our fast-food themed strategy games made out of cardboard and plastic should not be designed by foreigners in the Netherlands or made in a factory in China, or sold by a Canadian retailer, but rather should be made in the USA, like good old Sorry.
In sum, I am so very glad I made this mistake so that I can serve as a cautionary tale for others. Never buy something a year before a crisis emerges that risks your country’s very existence. Or if you do, prepare to pay a $162.67 penalty for $15 of treasonous commerce.
UPDATE: In the interim, a Court has ruled that these tariffs were illegally imposed. Supposedly, I might get my money back. Probably right after the threat to America from Splotter Games is at an end.
[1] I am told this comes from Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution.
[2] I am told this comes from Section 321(a)(2)(C) of the Tariff Act, a 1938 amendment to the 1930 Tariff Act.
[3] I am told this comes from Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. See also this general discussion.
[4] First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
—Martin Niemöller
Source: Board Game Quest
