A flurry of so-called “origin washing” advertisements have flooded Chinese social media platforms, offering exporters ways to avoid steep U.S. tariffs by re-exporting and freight forwarding goods or falsely labeling their place of manufacture.
Video ads posted on Xiaohongshu, or RedNote, and Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, show businesses promoting “one-stop re-export and freight forwarding services” via Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam and Thailand to circumvent growing restrictions on export re-routing via these markets.
“Chinese manufacturers that have the U.S. as their main market must find a way to survive,” Taiwanese businessman Lee Meng-chu told Radio Free Asia, noting the “huge demand” for transit solutions that enable exporters to sell to the U.S. but evade the 145% U.S. tariffs imposed on Chinese imports.
Freight forwarders, or customs brokers, have emerged as key facilitators, managing customs declaration documents, clearance, and certificates of origin, with their service fees set to rise with the spike in demand, said Lee. Some freight forwarders are even helping exporters change or reload containers to disguise origins, he said.
One Douyin user, “Freight Forwarder Lao Wang,” claims to have established a new U.S.-recognized transshipment channel where “80% of products are fully compliant through traceability of origin,” a video posted on the platform showed.
His advertised “one-stop solution” covers the entire supply chain services and includes “domestic customs declaration, ship booking, trans-shipment port operation, second-level ship booking, and U.S. customs clearance and delivery.”
Many users on Douyin warn that re-export trade – the process of exporting previously imported goods without use or modification – has been hardest hit due to increasing scrutiny as countries deploy artificial intelligence technology to monitor global shipping routes in real time and investigate tax evasion through Southeast Asian re-exports.
Vietnam has intensified inspections of raw material origins to prevent fraudulent origin certificates, while Thailand has strengthened product origin verification for U.S.-bound exports to combat tariff evasion.
“The entire supply chain needs to be clearly declared, down to the source of buttons,” warns one Douyin user. “Tariff fraud carries penalties up to 20 years imprisonment, 300% fines on the amount of taxes evaded, and 10-year profit tracing.”
U.S. law requires imported goods to undergo “substantial transformation” before they can legally claim a new origin country.
Many Chinese manufacturers had initially planned to completely move their production bases to Southeast Asia or other low-cost regions, noted Sun Kuo-Hsiang, professor of the Department of International Affairs and Business at the University of South China.
However, they were forced to resort to “origin washing” as either the construction of factories had not been completed or due to lack of production capacity, Sun told RFA.
European and U.S. authorities have also stepped up scrutiny on the certificate of origins, but inspection capabilities cannot keep pace with the number of businesses openly promoting “origin washing” services through ads on social media, said Sun.
Edited by Tenzin Pema and Mat Pennington.
