According to data, about 80% of all toys sold in the US and 90% of Christmas items are manufactured in China.
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Released on May 11, 2025
Whether you’re filming a toy car or hanging Christmas ornaments, you’re likely to be dealing with products made in a Chinese factory.
A day after President Donald Trump spoke about his tariff policy that in an interview with him about his tariff policy, that American girls don’t need to “have 30 dolls,” some political commentators discussed China’s influence on the US toy market. The US currently has a 145% tariff on goods from China.
“China makes 80% of all toys sold in this country and 90% of all Christmas items sold in this country,” former New York Times columnist Charles Blow said during a May 5 appearance with CNN’s Newsnight and Abby Phillip. “We have a lot of leverage with China. The Christmas and the doll industry are not one of them.”
Blow told Politifact that his source was the New York Times’ April 29 report. “Factories in China produce nearly 80% of all toys and 90% of Christmas items sold in the US.”
The data shows that these numbers have been rounded up but not too far.
Blow’s statement “is directionally accurate, but slightly exaggerated with toys,” said Gilberto Garcia-Vazquez, chief economist at Datawheel, which runs an online economic data platform called the Observatory of Economic Complexity.
He said about 73%, or about 73%, was manufactured in China from $41 billion worth of imports, games and sports goods by the US in 2024.
“Including small but unnecessarily domestic production, China appears to be close to 72% of the toys actually sold in the US, rather than 80%,” Garcia Vazquez said. The Observatory of Economic Complexity uses data sources from “Statistical Office, Open Data Portal, or Custom Union Websites.”
Claire Hoover, a spokesman for the USITC, politically provided an analysis of 2024 data, in which 78.3% of toy imports and 85% of Christmas-related imports such as light, wood and decorations are manufactured in China. Toy categories include dolls, toys with wheels, and scale models.
This data was compiled using USITC’s Dataweb, which cites statistics published by the US Department of Commerce’s Census Bureau, accessed May 9th.
Garcia Vazquez also analyzed data from 2024 on Christmas items and said 90% of US imports in that category came from China.
He said Christmas lights are the exception as “Cambodia has recently surpassed China as the top sauce.”
The New York Times released an April 27 report showing that 76% of “Toys and Puzzles” and 87% of “Christmas decorations” come from China. “About 80% of the toys sold in the US are made in China,” Bloomberg said, citing the Toy Association, a trade agency.
Data show that 73-78% of toy imports and 85-90% of Christmas-related imports in 2024 came from China, supporting Blow’s point that the majority of these products come from China. We appreciate his statement in truth.
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