Federal judge block's Trump's tariffs for Vernon Hills toy makers

A federal judge on Thursday blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from collecting tariffs from Learning Resources and Hand2Mind, family-owned toy makers based in Vernon Hills, north of Chicago.

A law Trump invoked to help launch his trade war "does not authorize the President to impose the tariffs," wrote U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras in his order.

Learning Resources and Hand2Mind, run by the same fourth-generation family owners, employ about 500 people in Illinois, as well as New York and California. They make interactive educational toys such as Spike the Fine Motor Hedgehog and the Pretend & Play Calculator Cash Register. Its educational products and toys are sold in more than 100 countries.

The companies filed a lawsuit against Trump and his administration in April, weeks after he ordered tariffs on some 60 countries.

“It’s super gratifying to see that the judge agreed with our opinion,” Elana Woldenberg Ruffman, HandtoMind’s vice president of marketing, said about Thursday’s ruling.

However, the Trump administration already appealed the judge’s decision. And for now, tariffs are still being collected from Learning Resources and Hand2Mind because trade policies haven’t changed yet, Ruffman said. “There’s still a lot that can happen,” she added.

In a separate ruling on Wednesday, the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that Trump overstepped his authority when he invoked the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act to declare a national emergency and impose tariffs. But the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Thursday allowed the president to temporarily continue collecting the tariffs under the emergency powers law while he appeals the trade court’s decision.

Learning Resources and Hand2Mind have survived significant challenges, including the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic, “but the President’s unilateral tariffs are now posing the greatest challenge of their existence,” according to their April complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

Ruffman said her family’s mission-driven educational toy companies, which are over 100-years-old, were “proud to file the lawsuit” against Trump’s tariffs. The 145% levies on products from China were “essentially a ban on our products. That has real life implications for the people who work for us. The consequences could be very severe,” she said.

In April, Ruffman wrote on LinkedIn that “the current tariff policy threatens the very existence of our business, as well as thousands of other small- and medium-sized businesses like ours.”

Learning Resources and Hand2Mind develop their products in the U.S. but manufacture overseas in China, Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand and India.

Their lawsuit called Trump’s tariffs “an extraordinary Executive Branch power grab.”

The complaint said the president “has asserted the authority to impose tariffs (essentially, taxes) on imports from any country, on any schedule, in any amount, and for any policy reason couched as an ‘emergency.’ Neither the Constitution nor the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (“IEEPA”) grants the President tariff-levying authority at all.”