The Chinese Communist Party is using TikTok to launch a sophisticated campaign to undermine and evade President Donald Trump’s new tariffs on China, according to a report.
The report, from the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), alleges that the CCP is behind a trend of videos that urge consumers to buy directly from Chinese companies that claim to produce goods for American brands, or to use other potential tariff evasion techniques.
Following Trump’s April 2 announcement of the “reciprocal tariff,” viral TikTok videos began urging consumers to bypass American brands and buy directly from Chinese manufacturers at cheaper prices. TikTok is accused of being heavily influenced by the CCP, and due to its ownership by Beijing-headquartered ByteDance, it is subject to Chinese law requiring it to assist and cooperate with national intelligence work.
The report comes as a 145% duty on goods imported from China goes into effect as part of Trump’s plan to promote free and fair trade between the United States and China. Trump levied tariffs across the board against countries across the world, but China was always seen as the main target of the “Liberation Day” tariffs.
One of the videos featured in the report shows a man claiming his factory has created goods for “most of the luxury goods around the world,” including Gucci, Prada, Coach, and Louis Vuitton.
“The USA and its little European brothers are trying to refuse Chinese goods,” the man says in the video. “Why don’t you just contact us and buy from us. You won’t believe the prices we give you.”
Many of the videos, which have received more than 50 million views on TikTok alone, show Chinese influencers in factories promoting products like shoes and bags made by Chinese companies.
According to the NCRI report, the messaging is amplified by TikTok’s highly-persuasive algorithm known for shaping attitudes and behavior.
“When CCP-linked influencers encourage Americans to ‘cut out the middleman,’ what they’re really promoting is a system designed to defeat tariff enforcement while appearing trendy and harmless,” NCRI co-founder and director Joel Finkelstein told The Daily Wire.
A TikTok spokesperson disputed the report in a statement to The Daily Wire and claimed it was an attempt to harm the Chinese-owned company.
“NCRI is attempting to peddle false theories through yet another bogus ‘report’ on TikTok,” the spokesperson said. “While NCRI’s own ‘analysis’ acknowledges tariff-related content exists across U.S. social media, its conclusions that single out TikTok are unfounded, inaccurate and a deliberate effort to malign our business.”
Finkelstein says most reports on the viral TikTok trend overlook the CCP’s role in orchestrating the trend. The Chinese have a clear interest in undermining U.S. tariffs, through both the loopholes highlighted but also boosting negative sentiment in the United States.
“We started this investigation because the mainstream coverage — NYT, Bloomberg — framed this as just a curious trend, maybe suspicious, but offered no evidence and no method,” Finkelstein told The Daily Wire. “No one was asking: what if this isn’t just viral content? What if it’s a state-directed operation? We explored that hypothesis — and the data is overwhelming.”
In the 13-page report, NCRI outlines how the CCP is behind the viral trend as part of a campaign to undermine Trump’s tariffs.
According to the report, the social media trend coincides with the CCP Ministry of Commerce announcing its “Shopping in China campaign” which encourages foreigners to consume Chinese goods and the announcement of “major consumption promotion campaign for foreigners” in the CCP newspaper People’s Daily on April 11.
NCRI accuses TikTok of amplifying the content produced by CCP-affiliated influencers in the CCP’s top-down “Shopping in China campaign.”
NCRI conducted a test of the “algorithmic stickiness” of the videos, which are often tagged with “#sourcing,” and found that videos showed more than 4X higher “stickiness” than videos on other trending topics.
“Our testing showed that TikTok’s algorithm promoted #sourcing content at over 4X the rate of other trending topics — including NHL content during playoff season,” said Finkelstein. “That kind of stickiness suggests the platform isn’t just surfacing this material — it’s actively reinforcing CCP-aligned messaging with every swipe.”
The English-language content is tailored to young Western consumers, particularly women, and performs better on TikTok than on other platforms. According to NCRI, it often features anti-Western tropes like “Why pay greedy American middlemen?” While similar #sourcing posts on Instagram remained steady, their presence on TikTok surged.
On Instagram, the number of engagement of identical #sourcing videos remained constant, even as TikTok’s surged, according to NCRI.
NCRI accuses bot accounts of amplifying the videos on X with often identical captions. The group alleges that some of the social media chatter is encouraging people to use “triangle shipping,” a tariff evasion that routes goods through a third country before their final destination.
As an example, NCRI presents the case of a TikTok Account, Nihao Jewelry, which was “accused of using triangle shipping and invoice fraud by disgruntled customers,” according to the report. NCRI’s report also shows one-star reviews of the company, including one that alleges a customer’s package was shipped to Jamaica.
“Triangle shipping isn’t just a loophole — it’s a deliberate tactic promoted within CCP-aligned sourcing networks to disguise origin, exploit customs blind spots, and move goods outside the reach of U.S. tariffs,” Finkelstein said. “What makes triangle shipping especially dangerous is that it’s being normalized through viral content.”
NCRI further points out that in several Reddit communities, users are discussing triangle shipping — including one who translated a Mandarin-language article, reportedly from a Chinese seller, explaining how to use the method.
On Friday, the de minimis exemption — a shipping loophole that allowed goods valued at $800 or less to enter the United States duty-free — expired. According to Finkelstein, its expiration prevents Chinese sellers from committing invoice fraud by falsely undervaluing shipments to qualify for the exemption.
In another review of Nihao Jewelry shared in the NCRI report, a customer alleges that the company under-invoiced as a way to use the minimis exemption before it expired.
The Daily Wire cannot independently confirm allegations against Nihao Jewelry.
ByteDance, which owns TikTok, is facing pressure from U.S. lawmakers to divest from TikTok in order for it to remain available in the country. The Supreme Court has held that the so-called TikTok ban is constitutional on the grounds that concerns about the Chinese government using TikTok to harvest the private data of millions of Americans are legitimate.
TikTok was fined roughly $600 million in Europe on Friday for improperly transferring user data to China.
