TikTok videos use trade war to promote fake luxury goods
TikTok is flooded with viral videos alleging that prestigious brands secretly manufacture luxury goods in China to sell them at discounted prices.
But while these “revelations” are spurious, behind them lurks a well-oiled machine for selling counterfeit goods that is making the most of the confusion surrounding trade tariffs, News.Az reports citing foreign media.
Chinese content creators who portray themselves as workers or subcontractors in the luxury goods business claim that Beijing has lifted confidentiality clauses on local subcontractors as a way to respond to the huge hike in customs duties imposed on China by US President Donald Trump.
They say this Chinese decision, of which AFP has found no trace, authorises them to reveal the hidden underbelly of luxury goods manufacturing in China.
They encourage Western consumers to buy directly from the websites selling these goods, which bear no logos or labels but are said to be of the same quality and design as the expensive originals.
The prices are alluring too, dropping from $38,000 for a luxury bag to $1,400.
Brands targeted — which include Hermes, Chanel and Louis Vuitton, whose goods are produced in Europe and the United States according to their websites — declined to respond to AFP questions about the claims made in these viral videos.
But for Jacques Carles, head of the French Luxury and Design Centre, a management consultancy, the notion that luxury brands would manufacture goods in China is simply “absurd”.
“It would be suicidal. If there was evidence — and there isn’t — it would be the end. These brands aren’t stupid,” he told AFP.
While the TikTokers point to the skill of the Chinese workers, presented as the little hands behind the big luxury names, “these counterfeit workshops absolutely do not respect all the required stages in the manufacturing process”, he said.
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