A tale of toys and tariffs: How The Christmas Bureau copes as buying is more costly than ever

The Christmas Bureau buyers normally spend months carefully selecting toys to be handed out to families in need in December at the Spokane County Fair and Expo Center. But with tariffs looming this year, everything changed.

“We knew that the tariffs were coming,” said head toy buyer Cheryl Taam. “We bought 75% of our toys in January and the rest in February.”

President Donald Trump has enacted a series of tariffs on imported goods during his second term. Tariffs are levied on buyers based on the shipping date, not the order date, so Taam had to wait to see what the impact would be, particularly since the tariffs changed often.

“The last shipment came at the end of March,” she said, just before a new round of tariffs took effect. “We made it with three or four days to spare.”

The Christmas Bureau is a joint effort by Catholic Charities, Volunteers of America and The Spokesman-Review to raise money to pay for grocery store vouchers for thousands of families and a toy and book for each child. This year’s goal is $600,000.

Taam and her toy buyers put in 10- and 12-hour days to pull it off. Though the tariffs hadn’t taken effect in January, prices were already rising, and some companies and distributors went out of business. So, they ended up trying to purchase from many new companies, but not always successfully.

“We had to scramble a bit,” she said. “It was a little complicated.”

Taam said she wanted to order a few hundred scooters that she had purchased in previous years. They were popular at the Bureau, but Taam was told the wholesale price had gone up from $30 to $105. Taam said toys the Christmas Bureau buys need to be under $30 wholesale, so she was unable to place the order. She found it a repeated problem.

“A lot of the things we would have liked to have gotten were too expensive,” she said.

In many cases, Taam and the other toy buyers were calling companies to see what they had sitting in their warehouses that wouldn’t be impacted by tariffs. Drones have been another popular toy at the Christmas Bureau in recent years, but this year all she could afford were drones with Sonic the Hedgehog on them.

“They had it in the warehouse, so there was no tariff on it,” she said.

In another case, Taam was trying to buy several K’nex products, which are building sets. They usually bought those from a Canadian company, but the toys themselves are made in China. Taam said if they bought them from the Canadian company, they would have to pay both the tariff on Chinese goods and the tariff on products imported from Canada.

Instead, she went searching for an American company that sold K’Nex products. She found a Florida company that had some on hand, but not the wide selection preferred.

“They had some in the warehouse that were pre-tariff,” she said.

Taam said it isn’t possible to avoid tariffs by purchasing from American companies.

“All toys, even if it’s an American company, are made in China because it’s cheaper,” she said.

It wasn’t just toys. Taam also had difficulty finding the matching blanket and pillow sets the Bureau usually has available for older children.

“We ended up just trying to find what we could,” she said. “It was quite a process. We were able to get certain things we haven’t gotten before. We do have a lot of really, really nice toys.”

Though it worked out this year, Taam is already worried about next year. There won’t be any pre-tariff toys sitting in warehouses, so she and her other toy buyers will have to pay the expensive tariffs, which could have a devastating impact.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen next year,” she said.