What "Made in China" actually means

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Virtually every product brought into the United States must have a so-called "country of origin." Think of it as the official place it comes from. And this is the country that counts for calculating tariffs.

But what does it really mean when something is a "Product of China"? How much of it actually comes from China? And how do customs officials draw the line?

Here in the U.S., the rules are delightfully counterintuitive. A product's country of origin is not necessarily where that product got on the container ship to come here. It's not necessarily where most of its ingredients are from or even where most of the manufacturing happened.

Our system is much stranger. The answers can be surprisingly philosophical — and at times, even poetic.

This episode of Planet Money was produced by James Sneed with help from Sylvie Douglis. It was edited by Jess Jiang, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Kwesi Lee. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

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Transcript

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0:59.6	Maureen Thorson is a poet. She's published three books of poems. She's been featured in
1:05.3	fancy literary journals from The Horseless Review to Plowshares. If you ask poets if they're having fun writing poetry, I think you would get very mixed reactions.
1:14.6	I'm not sure we do it for fun in the typical sense of fun.
1:19.4	As a poet, Marine often finds herself puzzling over, you know, the fundamental nature of things.
1:27.1	Like, what makes a chair a chair?
1:30.0	Or a hat, a hat.
1:32.2	What makes this, this, and that, that?
1:36.6	And asking those questions is kind of her job.
1:39.5	But not just because she's a poet.
1:41.5	You see, Maureen also happens to be one of the top international
	...

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