Chinese manufacturers are flooding TikTok and other social media apps with direct appeals to American shoppers, urging people to buy luxury items straight from their factories. And amid the threats of sky-high tariffs on Chinese exports, Americans seem to be all in.
The pitch in the videos is that people can buy leggings and handbags exactly like those from brands like Lululemon, Hermes and Birkenstock, but for a fraction of the price. They claim, often falsely, that the products are made in the same factories that produce items for those brands.
American influencers have embraced the videos, promoting the factories and driving downloads of Chinese shopping apps like DHGate and Taobao as a way for shoppers to save money if the price of goods skyrockets under President Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports. DHGate was among the 10 most downloaded apps in Apple’s and Google’s app stores last week.
The videos are surging in popularity on TikTok and Instagram, racking up millions of views and thousands of likes. Many of the posts also seem to have elicited Americans’ sympathy for China in comments, such as “Trump bullied the wrong country” and “China won this war.”
The videos offer a rare outlet for Chinese factory owners and workers to speak directly to American consumers through social media apps that are technically banned in China. And their popularity in America highlights increasingly vocal support for China on social media, similar to the outcry over the federal government’s potential ban of TikTok.
“It’s activating people politically in a similar way that you saw when we were going to cancel TikTok, but this time in the context of tariffs and the overall relationship with the two countries,” said Matt Pearl, a director who focuses on technology issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It does demonstrate their ability to communicate with American consumers to drive a message about our dependence on Chinese goods.”
Mr. Pearl suggested that the Chinese government might be allowing the videos to proliferate, since it has otherwise tended to discourage its citizens from posting videos that infringe on trademarked products from Western countries.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington and the Chinese Consulate in New York did not return requests for comment.
The volume of TikTok videos urging users to source products directly from Chinese factories soared almost 250 percent during the week of April 13, according to Margot Hardy, an analyst at Graphika, a social network analysis firm. On TikTok, the hashtag #ChineseFactory had 29,500 posts on April 23; on Instagram, it had 27,300 posts.
Retail experts — and vendors in China — say it’s unlikely that the most viral videos, which claim to be manufacturers for brands like Lululemon and Hermes, are peddling authentic products from those labels. Those factories often sign strict nondisclosure agreements and are unlikely to destroy their long-term relationships with major brands in exchange for hawking a few goods through direct sales, said Sucharita Kodali, a retail analyst at Forrester.
The Chinese government appears to be allowing the videos to proliferate, she said.
“A Lululemon or Chanel’s interests right now in China are probably No. 100 on the list of things that the Chinese trade minister and officials there are concerned about,” Ms. Kodali said. Manufacturers may also be rushing to close sales before new tariffs on May 2 add hefty fees to parcel shipments from China, she said.
Still, questions around the veracity of the goods aren’t stopping demand.
Elizabeth Henzie, a 23-year-old in Mooresville, N.C., said she found the manufacturing costs and retail prices described in the videos eye-opening. She made a spreadsheet of factories that claim they are selling dupes of sneakers, luxury bags and more, and linked it in her TikTok profile. That post has attracted more than one million views.
Ms. Henzie is now working as an affiliate partner for DHGate, where she will receive free products from the company for review videos and a commission if people make a purchase through her links. She said she believed that people in China were ultimately trying to help Americans.
“Seeing how other countries are coming together to try to help American consumers has boosted my morale,” Ms. Henzie said. “Even though it’s a negative thing that’s going on in America, I think it’s also pushing us to come together.”
TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has been taking down some of the videos, pointing to a policy that prohibits the promotion of counterfeit goods. But many have persisted through reposts. Even older videos about Chinese manufacturing are spreading in personalized news feeds amid major interest in the tariffs. TikTok declined to comment further, and Instagram, which is owned by Meta, declined to comment on the videos.
Sellers in China say they started posting the videos when sales fell. Yu Qiule, the 36-year-old co-owner of a manufacturing company in Shandong Province in eastern China that makes fitness equipment, said he started posting to TikTok in mid-March to find more customers after the tariffs prompted a wave of canceled orders.
Louis Lv, the general manager of export at Hongye Jewelry Factory in Yiwu, in Zhejiang Province, said his firm started posting on TikTok at the end of 2024, driven by a slowdown in domestic sales.
But he has watched the viewership in his TikTok videos soar since the Trump administration announced the tariffs. “The philosophy of Chinese businessmen is we will go wherever the business is,” he said in an interview.
In one of the most popular TikTok videos, a man is holding what he says is a Hermes Birkin bag while claiming to share its production costs from a factory. (The original video and account have been removed, but versions of the video are still widely circulating through reposts from other users.) He says that the purse costs less than $1,400 to manufacture but that the French luxury retailer sells it for $38,000 solely for the label. The man claimed that he used the same leather and same hardware to replicate the handbags without the logo, offering them for $1,000.
A spokesman for Hermes said its bags “were 100 percent made in France,” and declined to comment further. A spokeswoman for Birkenstock said that the videos showed “knockoffs” and that its footwear was engineered and produced in the European Union. The company said that it had contacted TikTok and that initial videos were deleted on April 15.
Lululemon, which has also been the target of viral TikTok videos from manufacturers who claim to sell its leggings for just $5, said it had been in touch with TikTok to remove false claims. Lululemon said in an emailed statement that it didn’t work with the manufacturers in the videos and warned consumers to be aware of potentially counterfeit products and misinformation.
Vanessa Friedman and Isabelle Qian contributed reporting from New York.
