Wizards of the Coast Says That China Tariffs Will Have Minimal Impact on D&D

Official Dungeons & Dragons products should largely be unaffected by the ongoing US/China trade war. During today's Hasbro earnings call, Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks said that the only Wizards of the Coast products manufactured and shipped from China are the D&D boxed sets. While this means that the upcoming Heroes of the Borderland Starter Set could have a higher price than usual (Wizards has made no price announcement as of yet), it does confirm that Dungeons & Dragons will largely be unimpacted by the ongoing trade war between the US and China.

Due to the large print runs, Wizards usually taps domestic or continental printers for its various D&D products. English language D&D books (at least the ones on my shelf) all have "Printed in the USA" in the credits page.

The wider board game publishing industry has been hit hard by the ongoing US/China tariff war, with products manufactured in China receiving a 145% tariff upon entry into the United States. Several publishers with RPG products, including CMON, have announced layoffs and changes to manufacturing plans as a result of the tariffs.

 

[Umbran]

Mod Note:
Hey, how about this:

@Clint_L and @Mistwell - just stop responding to each other in this thread, please. Thanks much.

 

[Mistwell]

Even at a 145% tariff, Chinese products are still the best value available in a lot of product categories. Often Chinese products are the only ones available at all.

My company did just buy something at the 145% tariff level but it's a pretty absurd level. This particular thing is an exception for us. It cost's $2 and sells for $14. So costing now $4.9 is still fine, though the majority of our expenses are not in the product cost itself but in the overhead. It really costs us about $11.20 each.

 

[R_Chance]

Burden of proof is on you to support your claim, so given that you can't name an example, your claim is currently empty. Moving the goalposts by blaming someone being "rude" for your inability to supply any evidence is weak.

Also, here is their post: "Do you have an example of a miniatures or boardgames company that does their plastic mini/component manufacturing in India?" How is this rude? Because...they dared ask you to produce some evidence of something that neither they nor I have heard of, with considerable experience in collecting miniatures? What, specifically, is rude here?

Pointing someone to a directory for a nation of 1.5 billion people and telling them to find the evidence for your claim is actually rude. Just admit that you made an assumption that you can't support. Or produce some evidence - I may have been collecting miniatures for more than four decades, but I certainly don't know much about the hobby in India. So if there is a cool source of miniatures in India, then I'd love to know about it!

Actually, they make 40mm toy soldiers and plastic action figures in India (that I know of). Given the market size I'm surprised this is an issue. 1.2 billion people (or more, I haven't checked lately) there is bound to be a market for RPG material / accessories. English is a second language for about 10% of them.

 

[Zardnaar]

And yet Canada provides 70 to 80% of the US softwood lumber. The US is incapable of producing enough lumber to meet our needs. If we tried, we'd destroy our forests at a rate that we could not rebuild. We'd fail because that rate would not be sustainable. We'd meet our needs for a few years ... but then ... we'd be screwed.

There is a massive amount of information surrounding how these tariffs impact us. You can't know it all. However, there are plenty of economists that have the tools to tell us more than we can possibly know on our own. When you go to the ones without a reason for bias (so not a mouthpiece for Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, etc... for example, international coverage), you get a VERY grim picture.

God I wish we still had real, unbiased, Walter Cronkite style news in the US.

I watch international stuff if I bother. There's a limit to what I want to watch though.

German DW and France 24 seem OK.

All the American ones are kinda bad to various extent. Lots of talking heads and opinion masquerading as news.

 

[Mistwell]

Following up on the prior India topic. Funskool is a board game manufacturer out of India. They make some Hasbro board games, Asmodee games, etc.. For example, they currently produce Catan. I expect we'll see some board game companies moving some production to them. Aequs out of India is also ramping up some board game component manufacturing and they currently make some Hasbro products.