Christmas Decorations May Be Impossible to Find This Year
Any guy who has pride in himself likes to present a good Christmas display at their house during the holidays, but that may be more difficult to pull off this year. Sure, it seems early to think about the holidays, and it is, but in a typical commercial cycle, holiday decorations are already being ordered and made for the coming season.
According to Reuters, U.S. retailers depend on China for Christmas decorations, because it's where they source 87% of their holiday goods. In turn, Chinese factories also depend on the U.S. market. According to The Nature Conservatory, nearly 90% of artificial Christmas trees are shipped across the world from China.
"If Americans want new Christmas decorations this year, they will have to pay a lot more for them - if they can find them on the shelves at all," Reuters notes in an April 10 feature about how the U.S. tariffs could impact the holidays.
Qun Ying, who runs an artificial Christmas tree factory in Jinhua, tells Reuters that no American customers have placed orders yet.
"Of course it's about the tariffs," Ying told the outlet. "By mid-April all the orders are normally finalized, but right now ... it's hard to know if any orders are coming. Maybe American customers won't buy anything this year."
Reuters spoke with another manager of a Christmas tree factory in Jinhua, Jessica Guo, who said she was recently told by a key U.S. customer that it is pausing a 3 million yuan order, which is worth more than $408,191 in U.S. dollars. On top of that, she had already spent 400,000 yuan on materials for the order.
Jami Warner, executive director of the American Christmas Tree Association, commented on the tariffs and possibility of these items being made in the U.S. instead of overseas. "They certainly can't be made in the United States. There's no manufacturing, the technology isn't here, the labor market isn't here," Warner said.
Warner also projects "significant" price increases on artificial Christmas trees this season.