Welcome to trade war TikTok

• The trade war between the US and China is the hot topic on TikTok.
• Manufacturers in China are touting their brands on TikTok, while US businesses lament rising costs.
• The US has placed a 145% tariff on goods from China.

The trade war between the US and China is the topic du jour, and a scroll through TikTok will tell you as much.

The social media platform — which itself faces a looming divest-or-ban deadline in the US — is ripe with videos relating to the rapidly escalating trade war.

The US and China have gone back and forth, issuing incremental, retaliatory tariffs on each other for days. As of Thursday, the US tariffs on goods from China stand at 145%. China has retaliated with a 125% tariff on US imports.

The tone of TikTok users on the two sides of the trade war is starkly different.

Chinese manufacturers proudly tout locally made goods

Some China-based TikTok users have been taking to TikTok to tout the quality of products made by Chinese factories.

While it's unclear where these TikTok users are posting from, many of their videos contain endorsements of China-made products that they say are essential to the supply chains of Western companies.

A TikTok user who posts under the handle Lunasourcingchina regularly shares videos in which she talks about the Chinese suppliers behind brands like Sephora and Zara.

In a recent video, she talked extensively about the tariffs and how factories and businesses in China will simply pass the costs downstream.

"Factories won't absorb the losses. They are not in the business of losing money, and importers won't take the hit either; they'll just pass the costs down the supply chain," she said.

A TikTok user who posts as Senbags says he is a custom bag maker from Guangzhou, China. He jumped on the tariff TikTok bandwagon, promoting his business. In a TikTok video that's been viewed 2.7 million times, he said the quality of his bags could match those sold by Western luxury brands.

Two days ago, another TikTok user, Gonest_lily, posted advice on how to get Chinese goods into the US without paying high import fees.

Of the 10 videos she has shared in the past 10 days, several are about tariffs, saving money on shipping, and how to ship products into the US.

And it's not just TikTok -- the trade war has also spilled over into Chinese social media.

One striking, AI-generated meme shows President Donald Trump, dressed in a suit and red tie, sitting behind a sewing machine in a garment factory assembling what appears to be a red MAGA hat. These posts have gone viral across Chinese social media platforms from RedNote to Weibo.

This flood of Chinese TikTok content has caught the attention of US-based TikTok users, who've said pro-Chinese manufacturing content has flooded the platform and their for-you pages.

"The tik tok trade war is fashion history in real time," wrote one TikTok user commenting on the Chinese manufacturers' videos.

"They probably should have took this app away when they had the chance," said TikTok user Imani B in a video that's been liked over 630,000 times. "The way that the Chinese manufacturers are playing their hand? Well done. 10s across the board."

US business owners worried about rising costs

In the US, some business owners are posting videos on TikTok about how the tariffs will hurt their companies.

TikTok user Chelsey Brown, who owns a small business selling home goods, posted a TikTok last week saying she would have to temporarily close down her shop because of the tariffs.

"We have one last shipment on the way. It's not subject to the new 145% tariff, but we still have to pay the 54% tariff on it — and that alone will wipe out the rest of our cash," she wrote in the caption.