Knowledge exhibits that about 80 % of all toys and 90 % of Christmas items bought within the US are manufactured in China.
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Printed On 11 Could 2025
Whether or not you might be gift-wrapping a toy automotive or hanging Christmas ornaments, there’s a robust probability you might be dealing with merchandise made in a Chinese language manufacturing unit.
The day after President Donald Trump spoke in an interview about his tariff insurance policies that women in the US don’t must “have 30 dolls”, some political commentators mentioned China’s affect over the US toy market. The US at present has a 145 % tariff on items from China.
“China makes 80 % of all toys bought on this nation and 90 % of all Christmas items bought on this nation,” former New York Occasions columnist Charles Blow mentioned throughout a Could 5 look on CNN’s Information Night time with Abby Phillip. “We now have lots of leverage with China. The Christmas and the doll trade isn’t one among them.”
Blow advised PolitiFact his supply was an April 29 report in The New York Occasions. It mentioned, “Factories in China produce practically 80 % of all toys and 90 % of Christmas items bought in America.”
Knowledge exhibits these figures are rounded up, however not far off.
Blow’s assertion is “directionally correct however barely overstated on toys”, mentioned Gilberto Garcia-Vazquez, chief economist at Datawheel, which operates an internet financial information platform known as the Observatory of Financial Complexity.
He mentioned out of $41bn value of imports in toys, video games and sports activities gear in 2024 by the US, $30bn, or about 73 %, was manufactured in China.
“In case you embrace home manufacturing – small however non-negligible – China doubtless provides nearer to 72 % of toys really bought within the US, not 80 %,” Garcia-Vazquez mentioned. The Observatory of Financial Complexity makes use of information sources from “statistical workplaces, open information portals or customized union web sites”.
Claire Huber, spokesperson for the US Worldwide Commerce Fee (USITC), supplied PolitiFact with an evaluation of 2024 information that confirmed 78.3 % of toy imports and 85 % of Christmas-related imports, similar to lights, bushes and decorations, are manufactured in China. The toy class consists of dolls, wheeled toys and scale fashions.
The information was compiled utilizing the USITC’s DataWeb, which cites statistics printed by the US Division of Commerce’s Census Bureau, accessed on Could 9.
Garcia-Vazquez additionally analysed 2024 information for Christmas items and mentioned 90 % of US imports in that class got here from China.
He mentioned Christmas lights are an exception as a result of “Cambodia has just lately overtaken China as the highest supply”.
The New York Occasions printed an April 27 report that confirmed 76 % of “toys and puzzles” and 87 % of “Christmas decorations” come from China. Bloomberg, citing the commerce organisation Toy Affiliation, mentioned “roughly 80 % of toys bought within the US are made in China”.
Knowledge exhibits 73 to 78 % of toy imports and 85 to 90 % of Christmas-related imports in 2024 got here from China, supporting Blow’s level that the overwhelming majority of those items come from China. We fee his assertion True.
