Hours after Donald Trump was shot at by a 20-year-old assassin in the Pennsylvania state of the US, Chinese retailers began selling T-shirts that were printed with the viral images of the former US President.
As per a report by The South China Morning Post (SCMP), T-shirts featuring assassination attempt on Donald Trump were up on sale even before most governments across the globe reacted to the incident.
One such seller on the Chinese e-commerce platform, Li Jinwei, informed, “We put the T-shirts on Taobao as soon as we saw the news about the shooting, though we hadn’t even printed them, and within three hours we saw more than 2,000 orders from both China and the US.”
“For this year’s US presidential election, we only made souvenirs of Trump, as he has a higher chance of winning the election, and he is popular among Chinese netizens,” the seller added.
According to SCMP, Li Jinwei simply downloads images from the internet and prints a T-shirt in 1 minute.
US has market potential for election-themed Tshirts
A Chinese entrepreneur named Allen Yao has opened a fully automated factory in California to print 3000 T-shirts per day in light of the upcoming Presidential election in the country.
“The T-shirts are imported from Vietnam and stored in US warehouses, and the production speed is very fast…“Demand is so strong, and we just can’t produce enough,” he added. Yao is hoping to increase daily production to 8000 by next month and 30000 by next year.
According to DHgate data, the transaction volume of election-related souvenirs in the US market has grown by over 40% each month since January 2024. The transaction value of goods was over 90% in the 1st quarter of the year as compared to 2023.
