Data shows that about 80 percent of all toys and 90 percent of Christmas goods sold in the US are manufactured in China.By Loreben Tuquero│PolitiFactPublished On 11 May 202511 May 2025Whether you are gift-wrapping a toy car or hanging Christmas ornaments, there is a strong chance you are handling products made in a Chinese factory.
The day after President Donald Trump spoke in an interview about his tariff policies that girls in the United States do not need to “have 30 dolls”, some political commentators discussed China’s influence over the US toy market. The US currently has a 145 percent tariff on goods from China.
“China makes 80 percent of all toys sold in this country and 90 percent of all Christmas goods sold in this country,” former New York Times columnist Charles Blow said during a May 5 appearance on CNN’s News Night with Abby Phillip. “We have a lot of leverage with China. The Christmas and the doll industry is not one of them.”
Blow told PolitiFact his source was an April 29 report in The New York Times. It said, “Factories in China produce nearly 80 percent of all toys and 90 percent of Christmas goods sold in America.”
Data shows those figures are rounded up, but not far off. Advertisement
Blow’s statement is “directionally accurate but slightly overstated on toys”, said Gilberto Garcia-Vazquez, chief economist at Datawheel, which operates an online economic data platform called the Observatory of Economic Complexity.
He said out of $41bn worth of imports in toys, games and sports equipment in 2024 b …