Tariff War Rages on TikTok

Browsing online for the latest news here and abroad usually starts my day as I prepare for the daily grind of work at the editorial desk.

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While half of the world has been past asleep, a lot that happened in the Philippines and elsewhere in the globe were posted already as online news in various social media platforms. So from X, formerly called Twitter, then shifting to Threads, the browser could get streams of news and stories, practically from all over the places.

But what was uncanny last Monday was seeing a lot of TikTok videos of Chinese businessmen and traders with a common message. Chinese producers are everywhere on social media and mostly on TikTok, openly exposing major luxury brands charging up to 100 times the cost to make these luxury items. They all tell about the most famous signature brands supposedly made in Italy, France, in the United States are actually all "Made in China" at very low costs of production.

In short, these TikTok videos tell people to just buy directly from China manufacturers of these "luxury" branded goods at factory prices.

Apparently, the Chinese government has lifted the security clause that previously bound Chinese manufacturers to keep trade secrets of the "luxury" brands they produce. Presenting themselves as Chinese manufacturers of most of these popular "luxury" brands, the videos show production lines of famous signature brands from bags and belts to watches to apparel to electronic gadgets such as laptops and cellular phones.

Obviously, it's in retaliation to US President Donald Trump's Executive Order (EO) that, among other things, imposed a 34 percent tariff on all China products and a baseline global tariff on nearly all other countries.