In Yiwu market, an election bellwether flashes for Trump
YIWU, CHINA » Deep inside a 10- block- long factory outlet mall in China, the people who supply Americans with their plastic dinosaurs and “Kiss My Bass” baseball caps are confident about an election victory for President Donald Trump.
Trump’s campaign paraphernalia — hats, banners, mugs and practically anything else that can carry a logo — has been selling briskly at shops in the vast wholesale market in the Chinese city of Yiwu. By contrast, shop owners said during recent visits, bulk orders for materials supporting former Vice President Joe Biden have been almost nonexistent.
“We’ve had four or five shoppers for Trump materials each month,” said Ge Lu, a salesman at one of about 100 shops specializing just in flags, referring to big purchasers who buy banners by the thousands. “We’ve had one Biden shopper this year.”
The place isn’t for the average shopper. Yiwu is home to the world’s largest wholesale market, where global retailers look for items to stock on their own shelves. In building after cavernous building, buyers for companies big and small pick through stalls featuring hats, T- shirts, banners, face masks, baby toys, knapsacks, modeling clay and practically any other manufactured product that will delight the world’s fickle consumers.
It is also home to what Chinese watchers of U. S. politics — a nervous group these days, given souring relations between the two countries and Beijing’s tighter limits on conversation — call the Yiwu Index. Big demand for a presidential candidate’s merchandise, goes the theory, translates into big voter turnout in November.
Right now, according to the informal and highly unscientific index, Trump leads Biden substantially.
“Trump still has the better chance,” said Zhang Zhijiang, the owner of a caps and hats factory in Jiangsu province who keeps a sales office in the Yiwu market.
Trump might welcome the news from Yiwu. He trails Biden in nationwide polls and in a majority of key battleground states just a week before the election.
Followers of the Yiwu Index believe it is reliable, however, and they have history on their side. In 2016, the index consistently predicted a Trump victory. In the final weeks of the campaign, demand for Hillary Clinton hats and other souvenirs weakened considerably. “They started off even, but then they stopped selling, and later, Trump sold more,” said Dai Fuli, the owner of a baseball cap factory.
China is watching the election nervously. Trump launched a trade war against Beijing and has taken a more confrontational approach on issues such as high- tech export controls, industrial espionage, Taiwan and the South China
Sea. At the same time, some in China expect little improvement under a Biden administration. They worry that Biden might even increase criticism of China’s human rights record while strengthening U. S. alliances with China’s neighbors and with Europe to limit China’s rise. Official anxiety has led to light coverage of the election.
Given the political sensitivities, the governmentcontrolled market has banned big displays of campaign merchandise for fear of looking partisan.
Despite its accuracy in 2016, the Yiwu political index has its flaws. Often the buyers are not the campaigns themselves but proxies, like companies and other institutions that want to express their support for a candidate, or simply stores that want to sell popular merchandise.