Trump’s Tariffs Threaten Artists and Creators

Back in August, I wrote about my friend Seth’s latest graphic novel, Monkess and the Springtime Sonata, a sequel to 2015’s delightful Monkess the Homunculus. He launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the project and was fortunately successful, raising over $10,000 to cover printing and publication.

But earlier this week, he posted a somewhat disquieting update about the graphic novel’s future:

I’m a little nervous due to the election results. Going off last time I used my printer in Hong Kong, I expect to get the books sometime in mid-January. Last presidency, Trump revoked Hong Kong’s special trade status that set it apart from mainland China. Now Trump’s promised a 60% tariff on all goods from China. The nailbiter is when he’ll roll that out and if it’s a Day One thing, will it affect goods in transit? If we get hit with a 60% tariff, that wasn’t budgeted into the fundraising and could very well sink us.

Seth’s not alone in this quandary. Polygon reports that board game and tabletop RPG publishers — many of whom, like Seth, use better and cheaper foreign-based companies to publish and manufacture their works — are also expressing concerns about the impact of Trump’s tariffs.

In the wake of the U.S. election, president-elect Donald Trump’s promised tariffs have sent a wave of panic through the tabletop industry. The proposed tariffs were a fixture on Trump’s campaign trail. These taxes on goods imported from other countries could include a universal increase of up to 20% on all foreign goods, with targeted increases of 60 – 100% on goods imported from China — a significant manufacturing location for tabletop game books, miniatures, and other goods, like dice. Though there’s still a chance for the Supreme Court to prevent these policies, if enacted, they could make tabletop games prohibitively expensive for consumers and game designers alike.

Meanwhile, over on X/Twitter, Fantagraphics’ Eric Reynolds explained the impact of Trump’s tariffs on comics:

Like graphic novels? Know that Trump’s proposed tariffs will substantially raise prices on them for consumers. Costs for offset printing in North America are already SO much higher (often TWICE as high, and the quality is lower, and the options fewer) than in Asia and Europe.

His final assessment? “If you think books are already expensive, just wait.”

Tariffs are a key component of Trump’s “America First” platform, allowing him to threaten and even punish other countries — American allies included — while supposedly shoring up American industries. During an interview in October, Trump laid out his intentions:

You see these empty, old, beautiful steel mills and factories that are empty and falling down… We’re going to bring the companies back. We’re going to lower taxes for companies that are going to make their products in the USA. And we’re going to protect those companies with strong tariffs.

Economists, however, are generally skeptical of tariffs and have cast doubt on Trump’s plans. For starters, they clarify that tariffs are paid by American importers, not foreign countries as Trump claims. (While on the campaign trail, Trump falsely described tariffs as “a tax on another country.”)

Since American importers are the ones who pay the tariffs, that usually leads to increased prices for American consumers, a fact that some Trump supporters didn’t seem to realize. For instance, the Consumer Technology Association estimates that Trump’s proposed 60% tariff on China could increase the price of laptops and tablets by 46%, and smartphones by 26%. Other goods that could be affected by Trump’s tariffs include clothing, car parts, and fresh produce like avocados, oranges, and bananas.

And though Trump’s tariffs may promise to drive business away from China and back towards American companies, a more likely result is that business will simply go some place that is neither China nor America. As great as it would be to manufacture more domestically — if only to no longer compromise on China’s human rights abuses — such a transition would be far from simple, requiring an extremely costly build up of American capabilities. And until then, Americans would be paying the price.

For the time being, those aforementioned companies and industries, not to mention independent creators like my friend Seth, must hope and pray that their work arrives in America before Trump can enact his tariffs. That, or they’ll have to accommodate those tariffs by eating the extra costs and/or increasing their prices and thus making it less likely that people will buy their material — either of which could be disastrous for them.

Given all of the evidence of their downsides, the obvious question is: why does Trump, who claims to be a business genius, endorse something so potentially damaging as tariffs? Historian Bruce J. Schulman has an idea:

Much like his 19th century predecessors, [tariffs offer] Trump an appeal to diverse constituencies: manufacturing interests, union laborers, declining industrial towns in swing states, voters without college educations and access to tech jobs. It also forms a coherent worldview with broad appeal: a nation victimized by insidious outsiders and the supposedly disloyal Americans who abet them.

In other words, tariffs offer the always image-obsessed Trump an opportunity to rattle his saber and look tough in front of his followers. They’ll eat up his rhetoric even as it hits them in the pocketbook, something they might not realize until the next time they buy a smartphone, a board game, a bunch of bananas, or even a graphic novel.

Update (2/3/2025) #1: On Tuesday, February 4, 2025, Trump will impose a 10% tariff on imports from China as well as a 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico, citing the need to combat illegal immigration and drugs. While China has yet to impose retaliatory tariffs, both Canada and Mexico have announced tariffs on U.S. goods. Trump also announced his plan to “definitely” impose tariffs on the European Union, and possibly even the UK.

Update (2/3/2025) #2: Trump has agreed to a one-month pause on his Canada and Mexico tariffs following those country’s plans to beef up their border security efforts. No such pause has been announced for Trump’s China tariffs, though.