The image shows a Trump t-shirt that was put up for sale on a Chinese online shopping mall. According to an article from the South China Morning Post on the 15th, just hours after the image of former U.S. President Donald Trump raising his fist with blood dripping from his ear after being shot was released, t-shirts with that image started selling on Taobao, an online shopping platform in China. The t-shirt was already being mass-produced by Chinese manufacturers around the time when the image was released by AP news at 6:31 p.m., as reported by SCMP. The shirts were printed and being sold within a short span of time, garnering over 2000 orders from both the U.S. and China in just 3 hours.
The t-shirts were priced between 39 to 68 yuan (approximately $7 to $12), and the seller, Li Jinwei, mentioned that once he saw the shooting incident, he immediately put up the advertisement for the t-shirts, and within 3 hours, received more than 2000 orders from the U.S. and China. The manufacturing facility where the t-shirts were made is located near Beijing in Hebei Province, and it only takes about 1 minute to complete one shirt by printing the downloaded image onto it.
The advertisement for the Trump t-shirts has since been removed from online platforms in China without any explanation. This incident highlights China’s fast-paced manufacturing capabilities and its focus on manufacturing equipment investments during large-scale stimulus measures, leading to excess production that is observed globally. Additionally, Chinese clothing companies are experiencing a surge in demand for political t-shirts ahead of the U.S. presidential election, with some even constructing factories in the U.S. to cater to this demand.