Tariffs on Christmas Decorations Surpass $500 Million
Happy Holidays! In this final update for 2025, we’re going to take a look at how tariffs are burdening everything on and under your Christmas tree, comparing import data from the first nine months of 2024 and 2025.
The cost of decking the halls has gone up by hundreds of millions of dollars, as everything from artificial trees and ornaments to nativity sets and Christmas lights face new tariffs.
In the first nine months of 2024, Americans imported $362 million of Christmas tree lights and paid $18 million of customs duties. Over the same months in 2025, imports fell to $329 million while customs duties rose to $45 million. That’s a 146 percent increase in Christmas tree light tariffs paid.
But that increase pales in comparison to the spike in tariffs paid on Christmas decorations, climbing from just $7 million in the first nine months of 2024 to more than $520 million in the first 9 months of 2025. Meanwhile, decoration imports fell from $2.7 billion to $2.1 billion.
While paying more to deck the halls, we’re also paying more to put presents under the tree.
Across nine import categories, ranging from clothing and books to toys and sports gear, customs duties paid have increased across the board.
If you’re anything like me, construction set toys and scooters are on your kids’ Christmas lists—and tariffs on that category of toy imports have risen from $736 in the first nine months of 2024 (yes, 736 dollars, you read that correctly) to $1.5 billion over the first nine months of this year, even as imports were down $2 trillion over the period.
We might need to update the tune and sing, “Santa baby, just slip some savings under the tree for me.”
May your days be merry and bright, even as your wallets may feel rather light.
Until next year,
Erica York
Vice President of Federal Tax Policy
Tax Foundation
Guess who hasn’t been hurt by tariffs? Corporate America. 3Q25 margins were a stratospheric 18%, the third highest ever. Historically, margins were around 2% in the 1950s-1960s, 12% in the 2010s. Profit per unit of real gross value added of nonfinancial corporate business: Corporate profits after tax with IVA and CCAdj (unit profits from current production)
Corporate America just keeps on raising prices at the same markups as in the recent past. In a competitive economy, domestic producers would slow their price increases, taking lower profit margins in order to take market share from foreign competitors who are hit by tariffs. Instead, it seems that oligopolistic pricing rules.
Yes, Trump’s tariffs are hurting consumers…with the full complicity of Corporate America.