Toymaker Rick Woldenberg ’81 Sued the Trump Administration and Won

On May 29, cellphone text alerts kept pinging Rick Woldenberg ’81 so frequently, he couldn’t remember a time when his phone blew up so intensely. It was a momentous day for Woldenberg: His toy-making companies, Learning Resources and hand2mind, sued the Trump administration and won.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras ordered the administration not to collect tariffs from the Vernon Hills, Illinois, companies. The government will likely appeal the decision in the next two weeks.

In April, Woldenberg filed a lawsuit against the administration, claiming tariffs would be disastrous for this fourth-generation family business, which mainly outsources the manufacturing process of its toys to China. Woldenberg estimated that if the tariffs remained in place, his import duties would balloon to about $100 million from $2.3 million.

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A child plays with Learning Resources’ Spike the Fine Motor Hedgehog toy. 

Courtesy of Rick Woldenberg ’81

Learning Resources and sister company hand2mind primarily sell educational toys such as Spike the Fine Motor Hedgehog, Cooper the STEM Robot, Pretend and Play Doctor Set, and dozens more.

“This case is not about tariffs qua tariffs. It is about whether IEEPA  [the International Emergency Economic Powers Act] enables the President to unilaterally impose, revoke, pause, reinstate, and adjust tariffs to reorder the global economy. The Court agrees with Plaintiffs that it does not,” Contreras wrote in his ruling.

On May 29, the ruling found that President Donald Trump overstepped his authority in applying IEPPA for what he called reciprocal tariffs of at least 10% on goods from most U.S. trading partners and for the separate 25% levies on goods from Canada, Mexico, and China.

The decision only affects his companies, but Woldenberg is still amazed at what he was able to accomplish within six weeks. “The fact our company that makes educational products could be having this kind of impact is just a little bit hard to wrap my mind around,” he says, adding how he was the only independent business litigant in the U.S. to go up against the tariffs, as other litigants launching lawsuits recruited plaintiffs.

Woldenberg’s successful hearing came a day after the Court of International Trade overturned the president’s tariffs imposed on April 2 on numerous countries. But soon after that decision was announced, a federal appeals court approved a request from the administration to keep its tariff levels in effect until after litigation plays out at the appellate level.

Now Woldenberg is waiting to see what the administration does next. It can appeal the ruling, and if the Appeals Court upholds the decision, the administration can then ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.

“I’m inclined to stand up when my company is in genuine peril,” he says, “and my hope is that by making a lot of noise, it can be safer for other people to stand up.”

Treading on legal ground isn’t new to Woldenberg. He worked as a lawyer for several years in Chicago for the firm Mayer Brown, and he took over his family toy business in 1998.

Earning his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering at Princeton remained a formative experience for Woldenberg. “It changed me, definitely, and it stretched my capabilities, taught me how to think and made me an independent thinker, as you can see from these past few weeks,” he says.

His recent victory was supported by other Princeton grads, he adds. His daughter, Elana Woldenberg Ruffman ’15, is vice president of marketing at hand2mind who also leveraged her social media presence to post about the tariffs; and Woldenberg’s lawyer, Pratik Shah ’98, was instrumental in quarterbacking the recent lawsuit.

When Woldenberg discusses his end goal, his tone rises in frustration, “I want to win the war. I’m not as interested in the battles. I don’t need a prize. I don’t need a trophy, and I’m not looking for recognition.” He goes on to say, “Why is it that people are not apoplectic that there’s a $600 billion a year tax increase that the administration is marketing as a tax cut? It’s shocking to me.”