Where do Christmas lights come from?

How imports Christmas tree light to the United States?

Introduction

This blog post looks at where do Christmas tree lights come from. Firstly, I am going to make a big assumption. That being that they are not made in the U.S.A. Previously in two articles I have looked at whether light bulbs are made in the U.S. and where light bulbs come from. Both these pieces showed that we import almost all of our light bulbs from abroad. So if you own a Christmas light factory here in the U.S. Firstly I apologize. And secondly please contact me (via our form here) am I will very happily update this article. We are always happy to promote local manufacturers.

That said I am going to concentrate on who is importing the light bulbs we use at the holidays.

Where do the numbers come from

The United States Census Bureau allows anyone to access economic data. In our case this mean looking at the import of goods. The Census Bureau groups uses HTS codes to group its data. where HTS stands for Harmonized Tariff Schedule. Basically these are customs related codes. Amongst the various lighting related codes there are three for Christmas lights.

• 940530 – Lighting Sets Of A Kind Used For Christmas Trees
• 940531 – Led Christmas Tree Lighting Strings
• 940539 – Christmas Tree Lighting Strings, Not Led

To be honest that is quite a lot. When I previously looked at the same data in working out who imported light bulbs I found only one code for all bulbs and fitting. However, when I downloaded the data only the first category had any data in it. Consequently I can’t breakdown the figures into LED and non-LED bulb imports.

So who is importing our Christmas tree lights

The table below gives the total import value for Christmas lights into the U.S. for 2021. Overall the total amount imported was $551,000,000. Interestingly, the major importer is not China. Previously we looked at import of light bulbs into the US (see the article here) and China was responsible for 50%.

So, to summarize. Cambodia makes 62% of our Christmas lights. Next come the Philippines with 16%. Then China with 13%. And then Mexico with 5.6%. Taken together these four countries import 96% of all imports.

Finally: Find out more about Christmas lights

The Energy Department has an excellent article on how your Chritsmas tree lights works (link).