Article source: Wu Xiaobo Channel on 2024-10-23 20:48:26 – The news is taken from major news media. The news content does not represent the position of this website!
“On the merchant’s books, the US election business has long come to an end.”
Text/Ba Jiuling
When it comes to the situation related to the US election, Yiwu merchants all shut down their chatter boxes.
There are only nearly ten days until the final results of the US election are announced. The closer to the sprint stage, the more active various forecast data and observation indicators become.
According to RCP’s statistics on the winning rates of major betting platforms, Trump’s winning rate is 60.0% and Harris’s is 38.6%.
Currencies and stocks moved after hearing the news. The U.S. dollar strengthened against the Mexican peso as Trump repeatedly emphasized that he would significantly increase tariffs on Mexico after taking office. Trump Media Technology Group (stock code: DJT.us), whose main asset is Trump’s own social media Truth Social, its stock price began to rise in late September, rising 169% in the past month…
In addition, there is another Chinese county that is also being closely watched.
It is Yiwu.
In the fourth district of Yiwu International Trade City, there are thousands of stores selling hats, many of which display samples of baseball caps with obvious European and American elements. Just take a casual look outside and you’ll be able to understand the main business of the store. Baseball caps are the star category among American campaign peripherals.
Yiwu, a store selling hats
Source: Photographed by minibus
In the past few U.S. elections, Yiwu would produce large quantities of baseball caps, flags, character toys and other campaign peripherals for sale to American consumers. It can be said that Yiwu merchants have stolen the limelight in recent US elections.
So how does it look this year? There is very little information online. To this end, Minibus made a special trip to Yiwu to understand the views of Yiwu merchants on this year’s U.S. election.
“Heroic Past”
On November 8, 2016, US time, Trump unexpectedly defeated Hillary Clinton and was elected as the 45th President of the United States. This result caught the mainstream media and polling institutions off guard.
Prior to this, the mainstream view in the United States was almost unanimous that Hillary would win the presidential election. Nate Silver, known as the “wizard” of big data in the United States, calculated through prediction models and believed that Hillary’s probability of winning is 71.4%, while Trump’s winning rate is less than 30%.
Compared to more scientific and systematic opinion poll predictions, Yiwu merchants are busy with orders from Trump.
According to media reports at the time, some merchants claimed that a week before the election, countless workshops and factories rushed to produce large quantities of Trump peripheral orders and sent expedited logistics to the United States.
A store selling Trump campaign banners in Yiwu in 2016
Source: Earth External Reference
Later, the New York Times pointed out the “acuity” of this small city in an article observing Yiwu. The article reads:
There is a 10-block factory outlet shopping mall in Yiwu City, Zhejiang Province, mainland China. It is known as the world’s largest commodity market. Various small commodities sold to the United States are bulk commodities here, including various plastic toys and elections. The most popular campaign product of the season, vendors who provide American businesses with baseball caps printed with “Kiss My Bass” are confident that Trump will win the election.
With vivid renderings, Yiwu merchants have become the most unpretentious “master of prediction” outside the US election. From this, also derived“Yiwu Election Index” – judging which candidate is more popular through the order situation in Yiwu, then he or she will be more likely to win the presidential election.
It’s just that there are always mistakes in predictions, and Yiwu “turned over” in 2020.
Before the election, the “Yiwu Election Index” predicted that Trump would most likely win again. Because Trump-related campaign supplies including hats, banners, mugs and almost anything with campaign logos are selling like hotcakes in Yiwu markets.
Some businesses have been preparing for the general election since the end of 2019, producing large quantities of Trump support flags. The merchant asserted: Trump will win the election because orders can’t go wrong.
To quote a New York Times report on vendors: Store owners said in interviews that bulk orders for former Vice President Biden’s campaign supplies were almost non-existent.
The result was that Biden won the election and became the 46th President of the United States.
This year’s US election and Yiwu
This year’s election saw more dramatic changes in the campaigning process for both the Republican and Democratic parties.
This also caused Yiwu merchants to experience more ups and downs.
The Democratic Party has changed its leadership, and businesses obviously have a sense of drama about “memorizing the wrong answer.”
In July, Biden announced his withdrawal from the presidential race and Harris became the new candidate. For a time, Harris had very few peripherals. In contrast, the Yiwu market is rich in mature Trump-related products such as flags and hats. On Amazon, Trump has twice as many merchandise as Harris.
Yiwu Gou platform, a store that sells baseball caps, showed a full picture of the store taken in July, showing baseball caps with elements of Trump and Biden printed on them.
Baseball cap with Trump and Biden elements on it
Source: Screenshot of Yiwu Gou platform
The news program of Japan’s ABEMA TV station also used Yiwu as a perspective to observe the US election, and came to Yiwu in person to interview and film.
A Yiwu boss who specializes in wristbands held a wristband with “Trump 2024” and “MAGA” printed on it and said in front of the camera: “(Trump’s merchandise) sales are better this year than in previous years.”
Whether it is Trump or Biden, as well as the Democratic Party’s latest presidential candidate Harris, a major issue in the campaign is related to manufacturing in China. Both parties in the election stated that they would only sell “Made in the United States” products during the campaign and refuse to use “Made in China” products.
This change has greatly hindered and damaged Yiwu’s wholesale model in this year’s U.S. election.
According to the Financial Times, several Yiwu merchants who wholesale flags and hats said that they have received fewer orders for 2024 U.S. election-related goods than in 2020 as U.S. wholesale buyers began to switch to purchasing from Vietnam and Cambodia. 20% to 30%.
Official data from the US International Trade Commission also shows that the number of flags imported by the United States from China dropped by about a quarter between 2022 and 2023.
On August 1 this year, Biden also signed a bill stipulating that the federal government can only purchase American flags that are entirely made in the United States. This is obviously aimed at China’s small businesses.
Detour to do business
Due to the boycott, Yiwu merchants chose to take a detour to do business.
Not limited to wholesale channels, Yiwu merchants have started cross-border e-commerce, opening stores directly on e-commerce platforms to sell campaign products to American voters.
Searching for best-selling products with the keyword “Trump flag 2024” on Amazon, 46 of the top 48 products show that the seller’s address is in China.
Analysis by the Financial Times shows that among the best-selling flags and hats featuring Donald Trump or Kamala Harris on Amazon, more than 90% of sellers are based in China.
According to the sales volume and quantity ratio of Chinese sellers on each Amazon site calculated by Seller Wizard, about 55% of the US sites are Chinese sellers, and they occupy 58% of the market share.
In July this year, less than 24 hours after Trump was shot, a factory in Yiwu produced flags with elements of the assassination. A white T-shirt printed with a photo of Trump at the moment of the shooting has sold well.
When it comes to making money, Yiwu businessmen have always been very fast. In addition to the extremely fast response speed, there is another important reason why Yiwu merchants are able to suppress domestic production in the United States, and that is the obvious cost advantage.
The “MAGA” baseball cap printed with Trump’s classic slogan has always been a star product in the US election.
The selling price of such a baseball cap in Trump’s official peripheral store is US$50 per cap. But on the Amazon platform, the same style “MAGA” baseball cap, produced in China, sells for about $15.
Trump-related baseball caps on Amazon
Source: Internet
With a selling price of US$15, minus the manufacturing cost, there is still a huge profit margin.
A shop along the street outside the fourth district of Yiwu International Trade City is a spacious, bright, and high-end hat shop. On one wall are samples of baseball caps with obvious North American style. According to the store clerk, the minimum order quantity is 1,500 items, and the unit price is around 7 yuan, which is about one dollar.
Yiwu, hat samples displayed at the door of a store
Source: Photographed by minibus
From wholesale to cross-border e-commerce, Yiwu merchants relied on the Internet and increasingly convenient logistics and transportation, cleverly changed their identities, and still penetrated into the markets surrounding the US election.
Trump and his supporters advocate bringing manufacturing back to the United States, but in the face of the absolute response speed and price advantage, there is a high probability that there will be no lack of “Made in Yiwu” and “Made in China”.
Royal Bobbles, a well-known American manufacturer, has launched a new bobblehead doll inspired by the “Trump assassination attempt”. It originated in China. When American actor Walter Masterson visited a store specializing in selling Trump campaign souvenirs, he found that almost all the products were “Made in China.”
In April this year, when a reporter visited Yiwu, he learned that a merchant had received an order for 1 million hats with Trump elements.
Some people used this to ridicule Trump and his supporters’ “Made in America” remarks, but they took advantage of this and said that this is the best evidence that the Chinese have taken away “American” jobs, and once again pointed the finger at Yiwu.
“Do you still want to do business?”
But Yiwu businessmen don’t care much about the accusations from across the ocean. They only focus on their own business.
Traditional sales channels have been blocked, and through transformation and detours, Yiwu’s election business is still doing well this year.
But once asked about the general election situation, the businessmen who had been talking about it invariably became silent.
The minibus visited several stores that mainly sell hats for the North American market. As long as the topic involves the US election, the store owners seemed to be a little bit secretive. They only said: “If necessary, we can customize it. The logistics is very fast.”
One of the merchants also emphasized that he only placed orders according to the customer’s requirements and did not know anything else.
Yiwu, wholesale store of all kinds of hats
Source: Photographed by minibus
The offline visit situation is the same, and there is no movement in the “Yiwu Election Index” in the online information.
In the comments of the “Yiwu Index” weekly price index in the past year, there is no content related to the US election. The whole story of the Paris Olympic Games spans the past year’s Yiwu Index comments.
Six months ago, when a reporter from Time Weekly asked businesses if they were willing to share their feelings about the US election, the businesses waved their hands and refused and said, “No, no, do you want to do business anymore?”
Just do business, don’t talk about politics.The U.S. election, at the moment when the results are closest, has tacitly become a sensitive topic for Yiwu businessmen.
Regarding the claim that “Yiwu Election Index can predict the US election”, merchants did not buy it, but seemed a little troubled.
A merchant told Minibus that these rumors caused them a lot of trouble. From time to time, people would run into the store, look at this and ask about that, and then pretend to casually inquire about the situation. At this point, the store owner gave a wry smile and said that he was just a small businessman and was not in a position to judge major events that everyone around the world was concerned about.
“Who wins or loses has nothing to do with me. I just have to do my own business.”
It was around 4:30 in the afternoon when we left. Many stores have half-closed rolling shutters, and store owners are sitting in their ten-square-meter stores, checking today’s orders in front of computers and tablets.
At this time, there are less than two weeks left before the U.S. election ends on November 5, but in the accounts of merchants, the election business has already come to an end——Because it is almost impossible for anyone to place a big order, and the business that should be done is almost done.
Yiwu people who are obsessed with making money are busy rushing for the next order at the most tit-for-tat moment of the US election, such as the upcoming Christmas.
There is no snow, no elk, and no Santa Claus jumping down the chimney, but Yiwu produces more than 80% of the world’s Christmas decorations.
The Washington Post once described the Christmas factory in Futian District 2, Yiwu:
Hidden in those streets of inconspicuous commercial and residential buildings are more than 260 “front-door” shops, supplying all the equipment that modern Americans need for Christmas.
