US Tariffs Unravel India’s Dream of Taking On China in Toymaking

Three years ago, Vijendra Babu opened India’s largest toy factory, a two-story building with enough space to play 11 football games simultaneously. The plant near Bangalore was a revelation for India at the time, offering a one-stop shop that could engineer toys, cut steel molds for their production and manufacture them. At the time, the $30 million investment seemed ambitious but not absurd: Babu’s business was almost doubling every two years. These days, he’s wondering whether he did the right thing. “We had plans to expand,” says Babu, managing director of Micro Plastics Pvt Ltd. “Now we will have to ...