Retailers are tweaking products to cut costs and offset Trump’s tariffs

Gadgets sold without batteries. Toys sold in slimmed-down boxes or no packaging at all. More household goods that shoppers need to assemble themselves.

These are some of the ways consumer product companies are retooling their wares to reduce costs and avoid raising prices as President Donald Trump levies new import taxes on key trading partners as well as some materials used by American manufacturers.

The economic environment in which the president has imposed, threatened and...