Chinese sellers have quickly outwitted Trump’s tariff master plan, by “washing” their products in third countries. With tariff negotiations at an impasse, Chinese imports remain loaded with 145 percent U.S. levies. After they were issued, Xi Jinping’s government slapped American goods with reciprocal 125 percent import duties. In a bid to contravene Trump’s tariffs, sellers in the Asian mega economy have started shipping goods to third party countries to conceal their genuine provenance. The process is known as “place-of-origin washing.” U.S. trade laws state that goods must undergo a “substantial transformation” in a country for it to become the new ‘origin.’ This has presented an opportunity to black market businesses, with Chinese social media sites now awash with people offering origin-washing services. “The U.S. has imposed tariffs on Chinese products? Transit through Malaysia to ‘transform’ into Southeast Asian goods!” said one advert on Xiaohongshu, posted by “Ruby—Third Country Transshipment.” South Korea is another hotspot for this transformative process. The country’s customs agency said it had found $21 million worth of goods with clandestine origins in the first quarter of 2025. “We have found numerous cases where the origins of Chinese products were falsified as Korean,” the agency said.
