Jordan McLaughlin, founder of Rookie Mage Games in Ohio, says he’s facing an existential threat in the wake of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on China.

The vibe is “panic,” the queer business owner tells The Buckeye Flame.

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Rookie Mage Games is a small business in central Ohio that designs and sells games. McLaughlin has his tabletop games manufactured in China, and the tax bill under Trump’s first round of tariffs on China came to $3000.

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It’s a huge added expense for a small business already struggling in a highly competitive marketplace.

But it pales in comparison with Trump’s 120% tax on goods imported from China — imposed and then reduced, temporarily, to 30%. That bill would have added up to $21,000.

The 120% rate could have been “a death blow” to small businesses, McLaughlin says, including his own. Even navigating a 30% tariff rate will still “be really hard for a lot of small businesses.”

The import taxes are on track to be “really catastrophic,” he says.

Not content to struggle in silence, McLaughlin is joining a federal lawsuit to overturn the unprecedented, and possibly illegal, tariffs.

Trump’s executive order imposing the tariffs relied on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which grants the president the ability “to deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat” to a declared national emergency, the lawsuit states.

But the order is “unconstitutional and unlawful,” the filing asserts, because “the imposition of tariffs is not among” the expanded powers a president is granted under the act, nor does the state of U.S. trade constitute an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the nation.

The threat, McLaughlin says, is to small businesses like his.

“Most will probably try to pass the cost on to customers, but that will probably lead to less sales since customers will be already paying more for day-to-day essentials,” he says. “My current strategy is to minimize my costs as much as possible and hope the courts take our side and remove the tariffs.”

Thanks to crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, McLaughlin said a wider variety of individuals have been able to break into his competitive industry.

His own tabletop game company was founded with Kickstarter funds in 2018.

Those alternate funding streams have created a “melting pot” of designers from every walk of life, he says, including queer-owned businesses like his. But they operate on much smaller margins than the gaming giants.

Smaller gaming companies order smaller runs of their inventory compared to big players like Mattel and Hasbro. Queer companies can have niche audiences, as well, limiting their order size.  

That means Trump’s tariffs have an outsized effect on small businesses’ bottom lines.

“ I am supportive if we want to build our manufacturing back up here,” McLaughlin says. “There’s ways to do that, but taxing small businesses into oblivion is not a way that’s gonna do it.” 

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