Good morning. It’s Tuesday. Today we’ll look at toy stores in New York that are struggling to cope with President Trump’s tariffs. We’ll also look at why New York City is slow to pay nonprofit organizations that it hires to provide social services.
And, later today our new limited-run newsletter about the race for mayor will come your way. Our politics team will bring you news and observations, as the campaigning shifts into high gear for the 11 Democrats running in next month’s primary.
Last week President Trump acknowledged that his trade war with China might bring disappointment at Christmastime. “Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know?” Trump said. “And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”
Jennifer Bergman, who owns the venerable toy store West Side Kids in Manhattan, worries that she won’t have dolls to sell.
She said that some toy companies are already marking up prices 10 to 20 percent. Others are delaying shipments, apparently betting that Trump’s 145 percent tariffs will be rolled back. And, as my colleague Daisuke Wakabayashi reported, holiday orders are also being frozen amid predictions of shortages.
“I don’t know if any vendors will increase the cost 145 percent,” Bergman said. “Right now,” she added, manufacturers and importers are “choosing not to bring anything in because no one is going to spend $400 for a $150 scooter.”
She mentioned Corolle, a brand of dolls that is designed in France and manufactured in China and that range from $40 to $150. “They told us a couple of weeks ago that they’re not bringing anything in until the tariff thing settles down,” Bergman told me. The same happened with an order of scooters that she placed months ago, counting on delivery in time for the summer. The importer diverted the shipment to Canada to avoid a tariff and told Bergman not to expect as many scooters as she had wanted.
She said that if she could not stock the shelves as the end-of-year holidays approach, “I will have to close my doors.” Sales were down $100,000 in the first three months of this year from the same quarter a year ago, she said.
She also feels the pressure of being a small operation — “a tiny little pin on the grid” facing off against online behemoths and big retail chains. “The Walmarts and the Amazons maybe can bring stuff in and stockpile it and sell it for what the prices are now,” she said. “I don’t have any extra money to bring in inventory that I can’t sell in the next couple of months.”
Bergman said she recently sent a survey about tariffs to her customers. Those who responded said they would cope with higher prices by simply buying fewer toys this year. “But I think the reality is, they’re going to do some price-checking,” she said. “They’ll say, “If I can get that scooter for $150 from Amazon,” and I’m selling it for $250 or $300, they’re going to buy from Amazon.”
Ezra Ishayik, who runs Mary Arnold Toys on the Upper East Side, echoed Bergman’s concerns about orders, saying that uncertainty about what toys will be available “is the scary part.” He said his Halloween suppliers “weren’t sure what the prices are going to be, so they can’t sell.” He is hoping tariffs will come down — perhaps as low as 10 or 12 percent, but even 40 percent would be “absorbable,” he said.
“The manufacturer will eat some, the importer will eat some and we will eat some,” he said. As for Christmas, he used words like “problematic” and “worrisome.”
West Side Kids was started by Bergman’s mother, Alice, more than 40 years ago, and Bergman remembers when there were 10 toy stores on the Upper West Side. Now, she said, there are nine in all of Manhattan, and hers was struggling even before Trump took office. She moved around the corner in 2023, to a storefront on a sidestreet. That new location reduced the rent by almost half, she said.
But “business isn’t great,” she said, in part because New York has never really recovered from the pandemic and the acceleration of online shopping.
Weather
Expect showers, fog and clouds, with a chance of thunderstorms and a high in the upper 60s. The showers will continue into the evening with a dip into the high 50s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until May 26 (Memorial Day).
The latest Metro news
New York City routinely fails to pay nonprofits promptly
If you made a list of all the things New York City is, would “slow payer” be at the top?
If you run a nonprofit organization, it might. My colleague Andy Newman writes that for many of the nonprofits that the city hires to provide social services, prompt payment is a distant dream. The city owes at least $1 billion to nonprofits, according to a new report from the city comptroller, Brad Lander.
Lander says the city is sitting on at least 7,000 unpaid invoices from nonprofits, some submitted years ago. He also says the $1 billion figure is probably low. His review found that as of last month nonprofits with active contracts with the city have done $4.9 billion worth of work that the city has not paid for.
The comptroller found that unpaid invoices ran an average of 49 days late across nine of the slowest city agencies. For the Department of Homeless Services, which has roughly 20 percent of the unpaid invoices, the average is 82 days.
Nonprofits can receive up to 25 percent of the value of their contracts in advance. Last week Mayor Eric Adams, who is running for re-election, announced that the city expected to make more than $5 billion in advance payments for the next fiscal year, up from $2.8 billion in this fiscal year. City Hall is also launching a new tracking system.
Lander, who is also running for mayor, said that increasing advance payments was “a helpful Band-Aid to help solve the immediate crisis,” but he added that more meaningful reforms were needed.
Dear Diary:
Earphones in and sunglasses on, I was power walking home through Central Park.
Suddenly, I noticed an older couple waving at me. It turned out that they were lost. They unfolded a paper map and asked for help finding Naumburg Bandshell.
I squinted at the map, nodded as if I understood it, then pulled out my phone to check Google Maps. As luck would have it, we were heading the same way, so we decided to walk together.
They were off to hear an orchestral ensemble, and their faces lit up when I mentioned that I played the viola in a graduate medical student orchestra.
When we got to the band shell, they surprised me with an extra ticket and insisted I join them. At intermission, we discovered that we lived just a few blocks apart on the Upper West Side. We shared a taxi home, and over an impromptu dinner, a friendship took shape.
A year and a half later, we still gather for dinner, a reminder that some of the sweetest connections are the ones that come unexpectedly.
— Mollie Hobensack
