Can this game maker figure out Trump's China tariffs before they sink him?

Dan Linden likes games. He likes trying to figure out the answers. But one tricky puzzle has him stumped: What is the actual percentage he now owes for tariffs on toys and games imported from China?

Linden, a 38-year-old Seattle resident, told NBC News he still doesn’t know how much he’ll have to pay to import the game he created and has staked his financial future on.

“I’m not a millionaire or anything,” Linden said. “These $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 tariff hits are going to take a significant chunk out of my own pocket.”

As it turns out, the entire toy industry is confronting the same problem. A representative for The Toy Association, the industry’s chief trade and lobbying group, said it could not comment on the current tariff level because it was “gathering new data about tariff impact on toy companies.”

Linden estimates he’s invested some $25,000 from his own savings to develop the game, Offshoots, a tabletop contest to see who can build out a “tree” using wood-based, branchlike pieces without toppling the trunk. Think Jenga meets K’nex.

He said he has plenty of orders lined up — and is racing to get more shipped across the sea before President Donald Trump changes his mind and increases the duty level.

After two years and two dozen iterations, Linden developed Offshoots into what he felt was a potential smash. He said it received rave reviews at a game expo in March and has won praise from other industry pros.

Thanks to contacts made through his full-time job at a larger toy developer, Linden was able to work closely with Chinese manufacturers to produce an initial prototype of the game that worked out to a $29.99 retail price.

Toy fair contacts said if he could get that down to $24.99 per game, he had a “slam dunk,” Linden said.

His first official sale came last July. Since then, he’s sold about 2,200 — and has placed an order for another 2,500 that he hopes will not be fully subject to Trump’s import duties.

But the price point is hanging in the balance. Already, it’s gone back up to $29.99 to cushion the potential tariff blow.

“My game is getting a really good response by the public, so I have to stay the course and try to grow it,” he wrote in an email. “However I feel like I am continuing to invest significant money and all it would take is another tariff increase to tank the whole thing.”

Toys and games had previously been exempt from tariffs altogether. In his most recent social media post on the subject, Trump said duties on Chinese-made goods would be as high as 55%.

In theory, that calculation incorporates the 30% in new tariffs Trump has imposed in his second term: 20% for fentanyl-related issues, plus the president’s new 10% baseline. That 30% is added to the existing average tariff level of 25% on Chinese goods that was in place when Trump took office.

But if toys and games faced zero tariffs before, what do they face now?

Linden said he remains in the dark — but that the final answer could clobber his income from the game. Before Trump announced his China tariffs, Linden was seeing a 23% profit margin on Offshoots games sold through a distributor, and about 50% when they were sold directly to a retail shop.

With 30% tariffs, that fell to 6% profit through the distributor and 39% through the retail shop.

If he ends up having to pay a 55% duty, he said, he will have to rethink his entire distribution strategy.

Linden’s concerns ultimately go beyond getting his game off the ground. The company where he works his day job is also facing headwinds from the tariffs. Should something happen to it or his role there, Linden fears he won’t be able to successfully transition into another field in what has been a gradually weakening labor market.

“I don’t have the work experience to change careers very easily, so I’ve had a lot of fear over what happens if these tariffs put the toy company out of business,” he said. “And then if they put the new game out of business, I don’t have a lot of marketable skills outside of the toy industry, and I can’t imagine people are going to be hiring like crazy anytime soon.”

Linden said he has no objection to making the game in the United States and has even begun taking orders for a version that is American-made — though at a $5 higher price point.

Linden said matching Chinese quality is significantly more expensive and more logistically complicated. He said he must string together disparate parts of the manufacturing process in the U.S. that, in China, tend to be under the same roof, or at least closely coordinated.

In Linden’s experience, consumers who like to talk about “buying American” tend to ultimately choose the option that provides the most bang for their buck, wherever it happens to be made.

Linden said a recent visit to another specialty toy fair showed his concerns about the state of the overall industry are widespread.

“It felt kind of spooky,” he said in a follow-up email. “I think everyone in the business is aware of impending price increases, but almost no one was willing to talk about it. This uncertainty has a lot of people stuck in limbo waiting to read what the morning news will bring.”

Linden said he hopes that by the end of the summer, “something will change,” or at least there will be clarity about the final tariff number.

Linden said he did not support Trump in the presidential election for numerous reasons, and was not surprised that the president has made tariffs the primary tool of his economic policymaking, given his campaign rhetoric.

Still, he said he has been taken aback by the toll Trump has allowed the process to take on the business community.

“He said he was going to do all this,” Linden said. “I knew what he was going to do. I guess he kept that promise at the expense of the businesses I’m involved in.”