On a recent December day, Mark Latino and a handful of his workers wove sheets of vinyl into tinsel. Christmas tree branches. They worked on a custom-made machine that was nearly a century old, producing strands of shiny silver tinsel 35 feet (10 meters) long.
Latino is CEO of Lee Display, a Fairfield, Calif.-based company founded by his great-grandfather in 1902. At the time, the company specialized in making handmade velvet and silk flowers for hats. It is now one of the only companies in the United States still making artificial Christmas trees, producing about 10,000 trees each year.
Definitions brightened This year’s twinkling light on fake Christmas trees – and how far America relies on other countries to produce plastic spruce trees.
Prices for fake trees have risen 10% to 15% this year due to new import taxes, according to the American Christmas Tree Association, a trade group. Tree sellers reduced their orders and paid higher tariffs for the stock they brought in.
Despite these issues, tree companies say they are unlikely to bring large-scale production back to the United States after decades of operating in Asia. Fake trees are labor intensive and demanding Holiday lights And other components The United States does not manufacturesaid Chris Butler, CEO of National Tree Co., which sells more than 1 million artificial trees each year.
Americans are also very price sensitive when it comes to holiday decor, Butler said.
“Putting a ‘Made in USA’ sticker on the box won’t help if it’s twice as expensive,” Butler said. “If it’s 20% more expensive, it won’t sell.”
About 80% of U.S. residents who put up a Christmas tree this year planned to do so Use a fake oneAccording to the American Christmas Tree Association. This percentage has not changed for at least 15 years.
Americans love to set up their trees, said Mac Harman, founder and CEO of Balsam Brands, which sells hundreds of thousands of Balsam Hill trees each year. On Thanksgiving Leave it for weeks to dry Fresh trees. Others prefer fake trees because they are allergic to mold spores Real treesHe said.
Americans also like comfort; Butler said 80 percent of the fake trees sold each year already have lights strung on them.
This preference is one reason why artificial tree production shifted away from the United States, first to Thailand in the early 1990s and to China about a decade later. Harman said winding lights around branches is time-consuming and tedious.
“Where are we going to get 15,000 people in America who want to light up Christmas trees?” Harman said.
Making an artificial Christmas tree from a template and cutting takes an hour or two Needles “To tie the branches together and string the lights,” Butler said. He said workers in China, where 90% of fake trees are made, earn between $1.50 and $2 an hour.
The workers who string the lights on the Balsam Hill trees are so efficient that “it’s like watching an Olympian,” Harman said.
One of Balsam Brands’ Chinese partners employs 15,000 to 20,000 people; Another in Indonesia has as many as 10,000, he said. Many are seasonal workers, as orders for Christmas decorations slow between October and February.
Balsam Brands, based in Redwood City, Calif., studied whether it could make fake trees in Ohio during the first Trump administration, when President Donald Trump threatened but ultimately delayed tariffs on imported Christmas decorations, Harman said.
The company hired consultants and thought about automating some of the work. But she concluded that a tree that currently sells for $800 would cost $3,000 if it were manufactured in the United States. Balsam couldn’t even find an American company to make the pair of gloves it includes in every branch-removal box, Harman said.
Lee Display employs three or four people most days of the year, adding more during the holiday peak to help with installations and displays. About half of its business is making custom displays for companies like Macy’s, while the other half sells directly to consumers.
Latino said he likes being able to place an order quickly rather than waiting for it to be shipped from abroad.
“You have more control over it. I like to think that everything here is either my fault or my careful planning and skill,” he said.
Tariffs still impact Lee Display. The company did not import lights or decorations from China this year and relied on items it already had in stock, said Latino’s son James, who leads business development and marketing. He added that the lights are starting to decline, so next year they will have to pay more to import them.
Some artificial tree companies are branching out so they are Less dependent On China. National Tree Co., based in Cranford, New Jersey, moved some of its manufacturing to Cambodia in 2024, and could source all of its trees from outside China by next year if it wanted to, Butler said.
But diversifying their suppliers has not made these companies immune to the impact of tariffs either. In April, the Trump administration threatened to impose 49% tariffs on products coming from Cambodia. This was the ultimate rate Reduced to 19%. Tariffs on artificial trees from China have also risen, but now average 20%, according to the American Christmas Tree Association.
Butler said his company imported fewer trees this year and also raised prices by 10%. He said he used a lot of the money to offer discounts to customers because demand was weak due to consumer concerns about the economy.
“It’s a discretionary item. People say, ‘I can wait another year,'” Butler said.
Balsam Brands cut its workforce by 10%, canceled travel, froze raises and even stopped serving lunch in the office once a week to accommodate the impact of the tariffs, Harman said. It also raised tree prices by 10%.
Harman said its sales are down 5% to 10% this year in the United States but are up 10% or more in Germany, Australia, Canada and France. This tells him that the tariffs have depressed American demand.
“If a happy Christmas were measured by the number of decorations people put up, then by that measure it would be a slightly less merry Christmas,” he said.
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AP video journalist Terry Chia contributed from Fairfield, California.