Mass market Christmas decor has not been manufactured in the United States for decades. If vendors were to try to make it domestically, the mere cost of moving the manufacturing operations would be prohibitive \u2014 let alone actually producing the trees. <\/p>\n
Mac Harman, the founder and CEO of artificial tree vendor Balsam Hill, estimates that if he were to manufacture Christmas trees in the U.S., the price of an $800 tree would skyrocket to around $3,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we make Christmas trees, some of the equipment is the size of a U.S. football field,\u201d he told NBC News in an interview. <\/p>\n
“There\u2019s a ton of capital that\u2019s invested in these factories, and the equipment\u2019s so big you can\u2019t even pick it up and put it on a container [ship] and transport it,” he said.<\/p>\n
Moreover, the most popular artificial option, prelit trees, are a very labor intensive project, Harman said. The lights are often strung by hand, a job that American factories have neither the manpower nor the budgets to undertake.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are over 20,000 people in China that manufacture Christmas trees. Many of those people are the ones that are experts in stringing the lights, and they\u2019ve done it for a long time. They\u2019re very fast at it. They\u2019re good at it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Harman described how the U.S. export Christmas decor business first took off in Thailand <\/strong>in the 1990s, before moving to China over time. <\/p>\n Now, he estimates, around 90% of mass market Christmas decor products are made in China. <\/p>\n But that could be changing. Following Trump’s election last November, Harman tried to diversify Balsam Hill\u2019s supply chain because he anticipated the president would follow through with China tariffs after he had spent months campaigning on them.<\/p>\n As a result of those diversification efforts, Harman said, during this Christmas season, around a third of Balsam Hill’s trees will come from outside of China. <\/p>\n Balsam Hill also tried to blunt tariff-related price pressures this year by importing the bulk of its inventory ahead of Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement in April. <\/p>\n But the administration’s constant back-and-forth since then on China tariff rates \u2014 from a low of 30% at one point all the way up to 145% \u2014 proved too unpredictable for Harman to effectively execute the pricing plan he had initially wanted to.<\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately, most of these trees [this year] have come into the industry at 20% or 30% tariffs. So those costs do add up,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n The overall supply of artificial trees will also take a hit this year, he said, after vendors opted to import fewer trees to offset the higher tariff costs. <\/p>\n Harman said he expects the industry to stock 15% fewer artificial trees this season, potentially leading to fewer options for those who tree shop later in the season.<\/p>\n Balsam Hill is not alone in paring back its Christmas decor imports during this year of outsized tariff impacts.<\/p>\n Costco CEO Ron Vachris said on the company\u2019s September quarterly earnings call <\/a>that the big-box discounter had \u201creally thinned down that whole category” of discretionary Christmas items such as toys and decor this year. <\/p>\n Yet, in spite of the broader tariff pressures and stubbornly low consumer sentiment, the National Retail Federation forecasts <\/a>that U.S. holiday spending will surpass $1 trillion this year for the first time. <\/p>\n![\"Decorations](\"https:\/\/media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com\/image\/upload\/t_fit-760w,f_auto,q_auto:best\/rockcms\/2025-11\/251112-xmas-trees-rs-a79cf1.jpg\")