Workers rush to complete export orders at a toy manufacturing plant in Lianyungang, East China's Jiangsu Province, on January 2, 2025. Photo:VCG

US President Donald Trump's tariff hikes on Chinese products could put "Christmas at risk" due to US' limited toy production capacity, Greg Ahearn, president and CEO of the Toy Association of the US, said in an interview with CNN.  

"No toys are currently being produced in China [for the US market], and there are reports that major retailers here in the US are starting to actually cancel orders," said Ahearn in a TV show hosted by CNN journalist Jake Tapper on Tuesday, local time.

As 96 percent of toy manufacturers in the US are small- and medium-sized enterprises, which cannot match the production scale of Chinese firms, it will take a considerable amount of time for US manufacturers to catch up with their Chinese counterparts. 

"There are some toys made in the US but they are mostly paper goods or highly automated goods, and it represents a small portion of the toys that are manufactured," Ahearn said.  

Speaking of if it is possible to shift toy manufacturing in the US, Ahearn said that it is absolutely not in the short term, as it would take three to five years to be able to build out the capacity, and 80 percent of toys made in China involve manual labor. 

"Have face painting on a doll, the hair decorating, placing them the correct way and packaging. A lot of this is hand labor that can't be automated here in the US," he noted. 

Ahearn said that toys for 2025 Christmas should have started from April to June but now has been stopped, and they are reaching out local representatives and administration for rectifying current situation. "Everybody wants to make sure that Christmas is going to be fun, and there will be toys under the tree for kids this year," he said. 

Amid widespread opposition, Trump on April 2 signed an executive order on the "reciprocal tariffs," imposing a 10-percent "minimum baseline tariff" and higher rates on certain trading partners, the Xinhua News Agency reported. 

In addition, former US treasury secretary Janet Yellen expressed concerns that Trump's tariffs and other policies were eroding allies' trust in US commitments, and that some investors were starting to shun US assets, Reuters reported on Monday.

Global Times