Trump's tariffs hit baby product industry hard, threatening parents with price hikes, shortages

Boston Globe

08-05-2025

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But with new tariffs more than doubling the cost of Chinese imports, prices on baby necessities are rising fast. And manufacturers and retailers are suddenly slamming on the brakes, halting months' worth of shipments, a move that economists warn will lead to shortages of strollers, cribs and other necessities as early as this month.
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'Baby products are not only critical, they're required by law in many cases, like car seats,' said Lisa Trofe, executive director of the JPMA, which is expecting overall markups of about 30 percent.
Infant furniture sold in the U.S. now faces average tariffs of about 129 percent, according to an analysis by S&P Global Market Intelligence. Other highly taxed items include toys (113 percent) and infant clothing (41 percent), S&P found.
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Inflation has already squeezed parents over the past five years, with groceries up 28 percent, day care up 23 percent, and baby food and formula up 10 percent.
Delta Children, the country's largest crib and children's furniture brand, paused nearly all shipments from China early last month, as soon as the White House announced higher tariffs. Although the company makes some products in Wisconsin and Kansas, it relies heavily on near-daily shipments from Chinese factories that supply its cribs, bassinets, strollers and high chairs. Without those new products coming in, inventory is quickly running low.
'We're going to end up with bare shelves in another couple of months if things don't change,' said Joseph Shamie, the president of Delta Children. 'We are doing our best to hold price increases to a minimum, but I've got to start making some tough decisions soon: How much more can we possibly raise our prices? What do we do next?'
The industry, Shamie said, has spent decades working with Chinese factories and testing facilities to ensure its products are safe. As of 2008, cribs, toys and other children's products sold in the U.S. must undergo testing at third-party safety labs, mostly based in Asia. Today, China has more than 300 such testing laboratories for children's products, nearly four times as many as the U.S. does, a federal database shows.
'Juvenile products are among the most highly regulated products in the United States,' Trofe said. 'There are so many safety, compliance and quality requirements, and to move somewhere else would take years and require significant capital investments that companies just can't make right now.'
The electronics section of a Costco in Marina Del Rey, Calif., on April 4.
Mark Abramson/NYT
The turmoil has been particularly acute for an industry that was able to carve out significant relief from tariffs during President Donald Trump's first term by citing care and safety concerns. At the time, high chairs, car seats, play yards and toys were all exempt from 25 percent tariffs on China. (Although cribs, bassinets and parts for car seats were not.)
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This time, the White House has made no such exceptions, despite lobbying from House Democrats, manufacturers and trade groups. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, during a congressional hearing Wednesday, said an exemption for car seats and other children's necessities is 'under consideration,' though he did not offer details on timing.
In the meantime, manufacturers say they are struggling with mixed signals and heightened uncertainty.
'For the last three weeks, we've been like chickens with our heads cut off - just scrambling, trying to figure out what to do if these tariffs never come down,' said Casey Ames, founder of Harkla, a company in Boise, Idaho, that sells products for children with special needs. 'We'd planned for tariffs, but we didn't plan for a full-on trade war.'
Ames raised the price of the company's flagship sensory swing this year, from $89 to $99, to offset early tariffs, but he paused orders altogether after duties jumped to 145 percent. He has considered moving manufacturing to the U.S. but said there is no way the numbers would work: A sensory swing that costs about $30 to manufacture in China would easily cost four times as much to make in the U.S. 'Nobody is going to pay $200 for a swing,' he said, 'even if it's made in America.'
The increasing availability of less expensive children's products in the past few decades has leveled the playing field among parents, allowing families of all income levels to afford toys, electronics, high chairs and strollers, said Daniel Cook, a childhood studies professor at Rutgers University at Camden who studies consumer culture. But the specter of suddenly higher costs - on top of rising prices for groceries, child care and other essentials - means many parents may soon be priced out of certain categories of products altogether.
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'If these tariffs stay in place, there's a good chance there's going to be a stronger bifurcation of children's haves and have-nots, of families with and without,' Cook said.
Trump last week appeared to shrug off concerns that parents might be hit with higher costs and shortages. 'Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know? And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally,' he told reporters at the White House.
The Trump administration has said higher costs may be a necessary hurdle in reviving U.S. manufacturing and bringing back factory jobs, though it has not elaborated on how new tariff-related price increases may clash with its goal of boosting the national birth rate. More than 1 in 3 adult Americans under 50 without children say affordability concerns are a major reason they are unlikely to become parents, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Newell Brands, the parent company of Baby Jogger and Graco, has raised prices for its strollers, car seats and
Pack 'n Play play yards by about 20 percent so far this year to offset the first couple of rounds of China tariffs. Although it has moved production out of China for its other brands - which include Rubbermaid, Sharpie and Yankee Candle - executives said the situation has been trickier to navigate with children's items.
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'The one piece that is most challenging is baby gear,' CEO Chris Peterson said in an earnings call last week, adding that the company bulked up on inventory ahead of tariffs. 'At some point, we will begin to run out of inventory. … When that happens, because the whole industry sources from China, we would expect that we and the rest of the industry will take additional pricing to offset the tariff cost.'
The company's stock has lost 49 percent of its value so far this year, putting it in line with other children's manufacturers that have posted similar drops in the financial markets. Dorel Juvenile - whose brands includes Maxi-Cosi, Cosco Kids, and Safety 1st - is down 59 percent this year, while clothing giant Children's Place has fallen 48 percent.
Kids2, the parent company of Ingenuity, Baby Einstein and Bright Starts, owns its own factory near China's Jiujiang Port, and is increasingly paying for import duties itself, by shipping extra strollers, baby gates and bouncers to warehouses in California. Many of the company's largest customers, including Walmart, Target and Amazon, have canceled orders they would normally pick up in China because of new tariffs, according to Mark Mintman, Kids2's chief financial officer. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
The Evenflo LiteMax NXT infant car is demonstrated during ShowStoppers on the sidelines of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, on Jan. 7.
PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images
'A lot of folks have just parked their containers, waiting for cooler heads to prevail,' he said. 'We're begrudgingly keeping the goods flowing.'
But, he added, the strategy comes with a cost: The company expects to raise prices by at least 20 percent.
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Until this year, educational toy company Learning Resources was able to bring most of its products into the country duty-free, thanks to an exemption on toys. But now, with all Chinese imports subject to a 145 percent tax, CEO Rick Woldenberg says his $2.3 million annual tariff bill could balloon to $100 million.
'The rug has completely been pulled out from under us,' he said. The Chicago-area business has moved about 16 percent of its manufacturing from China to Vietnam and India in recent years, though it hasn't been enough to offset the pain. 'Even if I eliminate every other expense - rent, electricity, health insurance, postage - I still can't cover that $100 million,' Woldenberg said.
The prospect of rising costs has left many parents scrambling. Anastasia Moore's baby shower isn't for another couple of weeks. But the 32-year-old, who is having her second child at the end of June, has already snapped up most of the big-ticket items on her registry, including a crib and a convertible car seat her newborn won't use for at least another year.
Given the product shortages and shipping delays she faced during the coronavirus pandemic, when her first child was born, Moore says she's being especially cautious now. She's even stocking up on bottles and formula in case breastfeeding doesn't work out.
'Sure, you can buy used children's clothing, but you can't buy a used car seat or pacifier or bottle nipples,' said Moore, who does marketing for a tech company in Stafford, Virginia. 'There are so many little things we're having to panic-buy.'