Let’s talk about Yu-Gi-Oh cards and the Trump Administration’s tariffs. The future Trump Administration is obsessed with tariffs. That’s just how it is at the moment. What we don’t know is to what extent tariffs will be raised and which country will get what tariffs on what product. Because as it stands Donald Trump has suggested a 10% tariff, a 20% tariff, and a 60% tariff and has not specified the product mix to have tariffs raised on. But I don’t believe that the Trump Administration will make an exemption for toys and games.
Yu-Gi-Oh products will ultimately be subjected to tariffs if they end up listed on the U.S. Harmonized Tariff Schedule by the Trump Administration and Congress. The HTS is the big list that determines what product gets hit with tariffs.
The problem with both Yu-Gi-Oh products and Pokemon products is that they have to be assigned a country of origin and a number of their products are made in China and in the United States. So a “foreign content” estimate has to be worked up to determine which country gets listed as the originator, the transformer, of the product. For Yu-Gi-Oh things might be simpler because they don’t really offer mixed products like Pokemon (for example binder collections that include a binder and trading cards) and mainly have trading cards and toys separate.
Konami does use North American printers for the US market. Which ones specifically don’t seem to be discussed by the company but the fact they do use them is good news for players and collectors because it could mean a lot off Yu-Gi-Oh product is not going to be hit with tariffs.
I imagine Yu-Gi-Oh booster boxes will probably be fine since it’s North American printed cards in hopefully American made plastic in again hopefully American cardboard boxes. That should do the trick. Yu-Gi-Oh toys and models though? That’s going to be a different story. A lot of toys and models are of Asian origin and while retailers generally don’t list the country of origin on their online listings I’m going to bet it’ll be an Asian country.
And Asian countries are not favored by the Trump Administration. If anything they’re demonized. That’s bad news for everyone tariff wise.
I will say that Konami will most likely raise prices regardless of whether or not their cards get hit with tariffs. Companies absolutely do take advantage of inflation to raise their prices regardless of how profitable their products are at that moment. So if the Trump Administration does raise tariffs across the board, expect your booster boxes to get a price increase regardless.
It should be noted tariffs and trade agreements are very complex, I don’t know exactly what will happen, and ultimately we just have to wait and see what happens.
And remember, countries do not pay tariffs… consumers ultimately do.