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9 hours ago
- Entertainment
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9 worst 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game' performances, ranked from Ozzy Osbourne to Jeff Gordon
Singing performances are part of the environment of an MLB game. From the national anthem before the matchup gets under way, to the seventh-inning stretch and "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," fans can always expect to sing along to some well-known American songs. Every once in a while, though, performances at baseball games don't go so well, becoming well-known for the wrong reasons. Everybody remembers the ... interesting rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" that came from Ingrid Andress at the 2024 Home Run Derby. However, it's "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" that usually draws the more high-profile performers, whether they're singers or from other genres of entertainment. When a celebrity is in the building, chances are, they could get invited to perform during the seventh-inning stretch. Sometimes, those performances are oddly thrilling, like Bill Murray singing as Daffy Duck during the 2016 World Series. Other times, things go south for varying reasons, like the performer forgetting the words. Here are the nine worst performances of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" at MLB stadiums — most of which are from Wrigley Field, a historic site for the seventh-inning stretch anthem. MORE: 16 NFL stars you didn't know were drafted by MLB teams 9. William Hung, Rogers Centre, May 2004 William Hung's fame spawned in 2004, when he auditioned for the third season of "American Idol" and drew heavy criticism from the judges. Still, he built a significant following and became somewhat of a celebrity despite not having the best singing skills. By May 2004, he had already appeared on everything from "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" to "Dateline NBC," and he was even brought back for a special "American Idol" episode at the request of fans. In the prime of his brief music career, Hung took his talents to Toronto for an MLB game. Singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" in front of Blue Jays fans, Hung didn't stumble ... for the most part. English was not Hung's first language, as he's from Hong Kong and moved to the U.S. when he was young. But he happened to mispronounce perhaps the most important word to get right in the traditional baseball song: Peanuts. You get the idea. Otherwise, Hung put on a nice show for the Canadian crowd, even throwing in a "it's time to" in front of "root, root, root." MORE:Complete list of every MLB All-Star Game MVP by year 8. Mr. T, Wrigley Field, May 2009 In May 2009, former actor and occasional pro wrestler Mr. T took the stage at Wrigley Field for the seventh-inning stretch. "Alright Cubs fans, let me hear it!" he said. Mr. T did not butcher any lyrics, so this one isn't too bad. In fact, the way he yells "One, two, three strike you out," was pretty funny. But he also didn't have much of a tune throughout the song, seeming to just scream his way through each word. MORE:What are the longest blasts in Home Run Derby history? 7. Conor McGregor, Wrigley Field, September 2021 Even non-UFC fans are familiar with Conor McGregor's loud, outgoing personality. He's hard to ignore. In 2021, "The Notorious" took a trip to Wrigley Field, throwing out a first pitch and stepping up to the mic for the seventh-inning stretch. "What's up, Chicago?" McGregor began. "Let's go Chicago Cubs." The Irishman didn't have a terrible start to "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," but the more time that passed, the more out-of-tune he got. It sounded like Conor never heard the rhythm of the song before he decided to sing it in front of thousands of people. MORE:Ranking the 13 greatest Home Run Derby performances of all time 6. Scottie Pippen, Wrigley Field, October 2016 Scottie Pippen is a Chicago sports legend. You would think that at least once or twice throughout his Hall of Fame basketball career, he stopped over at Wrigley Field for a Cubs game. But when he began to sing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" during the 2016 NLCS, poor Scottie sounded like he was a newbie to the song. Pippen kept a smile on the whole time he sang during the Cubs playoff game, but when he got to the second line, it went south. "Take me out to the ball game, take me out to the ball game," Pippen repeated. "I don't care if I never ..." The Bulls Hall of Famer took a few lines off from there, although Pippen did get back into the song and went mistake-free the rest of the way, to his credit. MORE:Who are the oldest players to see action in an MLB game? 5. Alex Cooper, Wrigley Field, July 2025 Alex Cooper, the host of the popular podcast "Call Her Daddy," also took the mic at Wrigley Field for "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." And to be fair, she at least put some effort into trying to have a good performance. With two of her friends acting as "background dancers" while she was on the camera, all wearing sunglasses, Cooper initially sang the tune in a deep voice, laughing along the way. The crowd's reaction to her performance was pretty bad, though. Boos rang through Wrigley Field so loud that it was hard to hear Cooper sing. No, Cooper didn't mess up the words, and she also incorporated more choreography than most performers. But getting the crowd to sing along is part of the fun of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," and Cooper certainly did not do that. MORE:Ranking the 11 most memorable Subway Series moments of all time 4. Jeff Gordon, Wrigley Field, May 2005 Jeff Gordon is one of the greatest drivers in NASCAR history, but nobody should credit him as a great performer when it comes to singing. In 2005, Gordon appeared at a Cubs game, asking the crowd, "You guys ready to do this?" before his rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." Maybe he's not completely to blame for this, but Gordon could barely get through the first line before he was no longer lined up with the organ player. By the time he was at "buy me some peanuts and crackerjacks," the crowd was singing a completely different part of the song than Gordon. Eventually, he got booed as he stopped for bits of the song. MORE:Ranking the 15 best and worst racing movies of all time 3. Warren G, Wrigley Field, April 2016 Warren G is a producer and music artist. So you'd think he knows the basic lyrics to "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," right? Wrong. "Cubbie fans!" he said to the crowd, then began singing. "Take me to the ballgame." No, he didn't say "out" at the beginning, removing one of the main words in the title of the song. That turned the crowd off from the start, and Warren G got a few boos in Chicago. MORE:Complete list of every pitcher in the 3,000 strikeout club 2. Mike Ditka, Wrigley Field, July 1998 Chicago fans certainly enjoy Mike Ditka, a longtime Bear and NFL champion with the team in 1963, prior to the Super Bowl era, also bringing the team a title in 1986's Super Bowl XX as a head coach. But on July 5, 1998, the fans in Chicago had a legitimate reason to boo Ditka. He was tabbed to sing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," and not only was Ditka late to the mic, causing fans to wait impatiently as he eventually scrambled into the booth, but his performance was sub-par. The former football player and coach sped through the song at a rapid pace, so much so that the organ player couldn't keep up with the song. Maybe he just wanted to get out of Wrigley Field, but Ditka barely made the song last longer than 20 seconds as he yelled. MORE:Ranking the 18 greatest Dallas Cowboys players of all time 1. Ozzy Ozbourne, Wrigley Field, August 2003 Ozzy Osbourne was a rock legend, but he was also quite the character. One of the all-time moments from Ozzy came in August 2003, when he sang "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" in front of Cubs fans. He knew how to put on a show, at least. "I want to hear a real crazy crowd, start singing with me. Are you ready?" Ozzy asked thousands at Wrigley Field. With Sharon Osbourne by his side, Ozzy then proceeded to mumble his way through the entire middle portion of the song. He got out, "Take me out to the ball game" and "Two, three strikes you're out at the old ball game," but that was about it. To give him some credit, Ozzy got the whole tune right, but it was almost all gibberish. MORE:Is there a Home Run Derby curse that really ruins swings?
Fashion Network
04-07-2025
- Business
- Fashion Network
Trump aims to shut trade loopholes China uses to evade tariffs
'A lot will depend on how the 40% tariffs are applied. If the Trump administration keeps it targeted, it should be manageable,' said Roland Rajah, lead economist at the Lowy Institute in Sydney. 'If the approach is too broad and blunt, then it could be quite damaging' for China, Vietnam and for the US, which will have to pay higher import prices, he said. The think tank estimates that 28% of Vietnamese exports to the US were made up of Chinese content in 2022, up from 9% in 2018. Pham Luu Hung, chief economist at SSI Securities Corp. in Hanoi, said a 40% levy on transshipped goods would have limited impact on Vietnam's economy because they aren't of Vietnamese origin in the first place. Re-routed exports accounted for just 16.5% of Vietnam's shipments to the US in 2021, a share that's likely declined over the past couple of years amid stronger enforcement actions by both governments, Hung said. 'An important caveat is that the rules of origin remain under negotiation,' Hung said. 'In practice, these rules may have a greater impact than the tariff rates themselves.' Duncan Wrigley, chief China economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said he's skeptical the latest deal will be effective in stamping out Chinese exports via Vietnam to the US. 'The devil is in the details, but I think China's exports will either go via other markets to the US, or some value-added will be done in Vietnam so the product counts as made in Vietnam, rather than a transshipment,' he said. As officials across Asia rushed to negotiate lower US tariff levels with their US counterparts this year, Chinese businesses have been just as quick to ramp up their exports through alternative channels in order to skirt punitive US levies. Shipments from China to Southeast Asia have reached record highs in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam this year. And there's been a 'significant increase in correlation' to the region's increase in exports to the US during the same period, Citigroup Inc. economists said in a recent report. Much of that is likely due to the shifting of legitimate production across the region. Goods destined for the US market may be sent from their factories in Southeast Asia, and what they make in their factories in China will be sent to the rest of the world, said Derrick Kam, Asia economist at Morgan Stanley. 'If you try to represent that in the trade data, it will look exactly like rerouting, but it's not,' Kam said. 'It's essentially the supply chain working itself out.' But it's transshipment that's been a major concern for Trump's top trade advisers including Peter Navarro, who described Vietnam as 'essentially a colony of communist China' during an April interview with Fox News. And it's not just been happening in Vietnam. Not long after Trump unveiled his 'Liberation Day' tariffs on April 2, garment makers in Indonesia started receiving offers from Chinese companies to be 'partners in transshipment,' said Redma Gita Wirawasta, chairman of the Indonesian Filament Yarn and Fiber Producers Association. Chinese products would be rerouted to Indonesia, undergo minimal processing like repacking or relabeling, then secure a certification that they were made in the Southeast Asian country, Wirawasta said. When the goods are then exported to the US, they'd be subject to the 10% universal levy that Trump has imposed on nearly all countries, instead of the tariff for China that still equates to an effective level of over 50%, even after a recent 'deal' that lowered levies from a peak of 145%. With the huge scope for arbitrage, coupled with little policing, that process will prove tough to stamp out. 'Chinese exporters and their affiliates and partners in Southeast Asia are highly skilled at adapting to changing rules, identifying loopholes, and sometimes overstating the extent of value-add by non-China countries,' said Gabriel Wildau, managing director at advisory firm Teneo Holdings LLC in New York. Some final assembly or transshipment may shift to rival Southeast Asian transshipment hubs like Cambodia, Thailand and Singapore, or farther afield to Turkey, Hungary or Poland, Wildau said. 'Another possibility is that the definitions and enforcement mechanisms are fuzzy, rendering the latest deal cosmetic and toothless,' he said. 'Rigorous enforcement would also require a significant boost of resources to enable US customs to verify compliance with the tougher rules of origin.' There have been efforts across the region to at least be seen to be making an effort to curb the practice. Indeed, Vietnam has made a big deal about cracking down on trade fraud and illegal activity in recent months. In April, South Korea said it seized more than $20 million worth of goods with falsified origin labels — the majority of which were destined for the US. The Airfreight Forwarders Association of Malaysia issued a warning in May as Chinese brokers promoted illegal rerouting services on social media. Malaysia has centralized the issuance of certificates of origin with its Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry, while tapping its customs agency to help curb transshipment. Thailand has expanded its watch list for high-risk products, including solar panels, cars and parts, and is mulling stricter penalties for violators. Casey Barnett, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Cambodia, is already seeing the changes in action. One factory that exports to major US retailers, including Walmart, Home Depot and Lowe's, said that customs officials were very carefully reviewing their products before being sent to the US, he said. 'It's creating some additional paperwork and a little bit of red tape here,' Barnett said. A senior manager at a logistics company in Cambodia, who asked not to be identified because the matter is sensitive, said export processing time has now stretched to as much as 14 working days — double what it was before. But in Indonesia, getting a certificate of origin is fairly quick and painless when goods are marked for export, often just requiring a product list and a letter to the provincial trade office, according to Wirawasta. Authorities prioritize checking products that enter the country to ensure they pay the right duties and comply with regulations, he explained. It's rare for them to inspect factories where an export good was supposedly made. So much so that sometimes, Chinese companies don't even need to muster up some local processing. 'The T-shirt could be finished in China, with a 'Made in Indonesia' label already sewn on,' Wirawasta said. 'Some traders won't even bother to unload the goods from the shipping container,' he added. 'Unloading costs money.'
Fashion Network
04-07-2025
- Business
- Fashion Network
Trump aims to shut trade loopholes China uses to evade tariffs
President Donald Trump 's two-tiered trade deal with Vietnam aims squarely at practices China has long used to skirt US tariffs: The widespread legal shifting of production to Southeast Asian factories and the murkier and illegal 'origin washing' of exports through their ports. The agreement slaps a 20% tariff on Vietnamese exports to the US and a 40% levy on goods deemed to be transshipped through the country. With details still scarce, economists said much will hinge on the framework Washington establishes to determine what it sees as 'Made in Vietnam' and what it sees as transshipments. Complicating matters is the fact that Chinese businesses have rushed to set up shop across Southeast Asia since Trump launched his first trade war back in 2018. The lion's share of Vietnam's exports to the US are goods like Airpods, phones or other products assembled with Chinese components in a factory in Vietnam and then shipped to America. That's not illegal. 'A lot will depend on how the 40% tariffs are applied. If the Trump administration keeps it targeted, it should be manageable,' said Roland Rajah, lead economist at the Lowy Institute in Sydney. 'If the approach is too broad and blunt, then it could be quite damaging' for China, Vietnam and for the US, which will have to pay higher import prices, he said. The think tank estimates that 28% of Vietnamese exports to the US were made up of Chinese content in 2022, up from 9% in 2018. Pham Luu Hung, chief economist at SSI Securities Corp. in Hanoi, said a 40% levy on transshipped goods would have limited impact on Vietnam's economy because they aren't of Vietnamese origin in the first place. Re-routed exports accounted for just 16.5% of Vietnam's shipments to the US in 2021, a share that's likely declined over the past couple of years amid stronger enforcement actions by both governments, Hung said. 'An important caveat is that the rules of origin remain under negotiation,' Hung said. 'In practice, these rules may have a greater impact than the tariff rates themselves.' Duncan Wrigley, chief China economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said he's skeptical the latest deal will be effective in stamping out Chinese exports via Vietnam to the US. 'The devil is in the details, but I think China's exports will either go via other markets to the US, or some value-added will be done in Vietnam so the product counts as made in Vietnam, rather than a transshipment,' he said. As officials across Asia rushed to negotiate lower US tariff levels with their US counterparts this year, Chinese businesses have been just as quick to ramp up their exports through alternative channels in order to skirt punitive US levies. Shipments from China to Southeast Asia have reached record highs in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam this year. And there's been a 'significant increase in correlation' to the region's increase in exports to the US during the same period, Citigroup Inc. economists said in a recent report. Much of that is likely due to the shifting of legitimate production across the region. Goods destined for the US market may be sent from their factories in Southeast Asia, and what they make in their factories in China will be sent to the rest of the world, said Derrick Kam, Asia economist at Morgan Stanley. 'If you try to represent that in the trade data, it will look exactly like rerouting, but it's not,' Kam said. 'It's essentially the supply chain working itself out.' But it's transshipment that's been a major concern for Trump's top trade advisers including Peter Navarro, who described Vietnam as 'essentially a colony of communist China' during an April interview with Fox News. And it's not just been happening in Vietnam. Not long after Trump unveiled his 'Liberation Day' tariffs on April 2, garment makers in Indonesia started receiving offers from Chinese companies to be 'partners in transshipment,' said Redma Gita Wirawasta, chairman of the Indonesian Filament Yarn and Fiber Producers Association. Chinese products would be rerouted to Indonesia, undergo minimal processing like repacking or relabeling, then secure a certification that they were made in the Southeast Asian country, Wirawasta said. When the goods are then exported to the US, they'd be subject to the 10% universal levy that Trump has imposed on nearly all countries, instead of the tariff for China that still equates to an effective level of over 50%, even after a recent 'deal' that lowered levies from a peak of 145%. With the huge scope for arbitrage, coupled with little policing, that process will prove tough to stamp out. 'Chinese exporters and their affiliates and partners in Southeast Asia are highly skilled at adapting to changing rules, identifying loopholes, and sometimes overstating the extent of value-add by non-China countries,' said Gabriel Wildau, managing director at advisory firm Teneo Holdings LLC in New York. Some final assembly or transshipment may shift to rival Southeast Asian transshipment hubs like Cambodia, Thailand and Singapore, or farther afield to Turkey, Hungary or Poland, Wildau said. 'Another possibility is that the definitions and enforcement mechanisms are fuzzy, rendering the latest deal cosmetic and toothless,' he said. 'Rigorous enforcement would also require a significant boost of resources to enable US customs to verify compliance with the tougher rules of origin.' There have been efforts across the region to at least be seen to be making an effort to curb the practice. Indeed, Vietnam has made a big deal about cracking down on trade fraud and illegal activity in recent months. In April, South Korea said it seized more than $20 million worth of goods with falsified origin labels — the majority of which were destined for the US. The Airfreight Forwarders Association of Malaysia issued a warning in May as Chinese brokers promoted illegal rerouting services on social media. Malaysia has centralized the issuance of certificates of origin with its Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry, while tapping its customs agency to help curb transshipment. Thailand has expanded its watch list for high-risk products, including solar panels, cars and parts, and is mulling stricter penalties for violators. Casey Barnett, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Cambodia, is already seeing the changes in action. One factory that exports to major US retailers, including Walmart, Home Depot and Lowe's, said that customs officials were very carefully reviewing their products before being sent to the US, he said. 'It's creating some additional paperwork and a little bit of red tape here,' Barnett said. A senior manager at a logistics company in Cambodia, who asked not to be identified because the matter is sensitive, said export processing time has now stretched to as much as 14 working days — double what it was before. But in Indonesia, getting a certificate of origin is fairly quick and painless when goods are marked for export, often just requiring a product list and a letter to the provincial trade office, according to Wirawasta. Authorities prioritize checking products that enter the country to ensure they pay the right duties and comply with regulations, he explained. It's rare for them to inspect factories where an export good was supposedly made. So much so that sometimes, Chinese companies don't even need to muster up some local processing. 'The T-shirt could be finished in China, with a 'Made in Indonesia' label already sewn on,' Wirawasta said. 'Some traders won't even bother to unload the goods from the shipping container,' he added. 'Unloading costs money.'
Fashion Network
04-07-2025
- Business
- Fashion Network
Trump aims to shut trade loopholes China uses to evade tariffs
President Donald Trump 's two-tiered trade deal with Vietnam aims squarely at practices China has long used to skirt US tariffs: The widespread legal shifting of production to Southeast Asian factories and the murkier and illegal 'origin washing' of exports through their ports. The agreement slaps a 20% tariff on Vietnamese exports to the US and a 40% levy on goods deemed to be transshipped through the country. With details still scarce, economists said much will hinge on the framework Washington establishes to determine what it sees as 'Made in Vietnam' and what it sees as transshipments. Complicating matters is the fact that Chinese businesses have rushed to set up shop across Southeast Asia since Trump launched his first trade war back in 2018. The lion's share of Vietnam's exports to the US are goods like Airpods, phones or other products assembled with Chinese components in a factory in Vietnam and then shipped to America. That's not illegal. 'A lot will depend on how the 40% tariffs are applied. If the Trump administration keeps it targeted, it should be manageable,' said Roland Rajah, lead economist at the Lowy Institute in Sydney. 'If the approach is too broad and blunt, then it could be quite damaging' for China, Vietnam and for the US, which will have to pay higher import prices, he said. The think tank estimates that 28% of Vietnamese exports to the US were made up of Chinese content in 2022, up from 9% in 2018. Pham Luu Hung, chief economist at SSI Securities Corp. in Hanoi, said a 40% levy on transshipped goods would have limited impact on Vietnam's economy because they aren't of Vietnamese origin in the first place. Re-routed exports accounted for just 16.5% of Vietnam's shipments to the US in 2021, a share that's likely declined over the past couple of years amid stronger enforcement actions by both governments, Hung said. 'An important caveat is that the rules of origin remain under negotiation,' Hung said. 'In practice, these rules may have a greater impact than the tariff rates themselves.' Duncan Wrigley, chief China economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said he's skeptical the latest deal will be effective in stamping out Chinese exports via Vietnam to the US. 'The devil is in the details, but I think China's exports will either go via other markets to the US, or some value-added will be done in Vietnam so the product counts as made in Vietnam, rather than a transshipment,' he said. As officials across Asia rushed to negotiate lower US tariff levels with their US counterparts this year, Chinese businesses have been just as quick to ramp up their exports through alternative channels in order to skirt punitive US levies. Shipments from China to Southeast Asia have reached record highs in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam this year. And there's been a 'significant increase in correlation' to the region's increase in exports to the US during the same period, Citigroup Inc. economists said in a recent report. Much of that is likely due to the shifting of legitimate production across the region. Goods destined for the US market may be sent from their factories in Southeast Asia, and what they make in their factories in China will be sent to the rest of the world, said Derrick Kam, Asia economist at Morgan Stanley. 'If you try to represent that in the trade data, it will look exactly like rerouting, but it's not,' Kam said. 'It's essentially the supply chain working itself out.' But it's transshipment that's been a major concern for Trump's top trade advisers including Peter Navarro, who described Vietnam as 'essentially a colony of communist China' during an April interview with Fox News. And it's not just been happening in Vietnam. Not long after Trump unveiled his 'Liberation Day' tariffs on April 2, garment makers in Indonesia started receiving offers from Chinese companies to be 'partners in transshipment,' said Redma Gita Wirawasta, chairman of the Indonesian Filament Yarn and Fiber Producers Association. Chinese products would be rerouted to Indonesia, undergo minimal processing like repacking or relabeling, then secure a certification that they were made in the Southeast Asian country, Wirawasta said. When the goods are then exported to the US, they'd be subject to the 10% universal levy that Trump has imposed on nearly all countries, instead of the tariff for China that still equates to an effective level of over 50%, even after a recent 'deal' that lowered levies from a peak of 145%. With the huge scope for arbitrage, coupled with little policing, that process will prove tough to stamp out. 'Chinese exporters and their affiliates and partners in Southeast Asia are highly skilled at adapting to changing rules, identifying loopholes, and sometimes overstating the extent of value-add by non-China countries,' said Gabriel Wildau, managing director at advisory firm Teneo Holdings LLC in New York. Some final assembly or transshipment may shift to rival Southeast Asian transshipment hubs like Cambodia, Thailand and Singapore, or farther afield to Turkey, Hungary or Poland, Wildau said. 'Another possibility is that the definitions and enforcement mechanisms are fuzzy, rendering the latest deal cosmetic and toothless,' he said. 'Rigorous enforcement would also require a significant boost of resources to enable US customs to verify compliance with the tougher rules of origin.' There have been efforts across the region to at least be seen to be making an effort to curb the practice. Indeed, Vietnam has made a big deal about cracking down on trade fraud and illegal activity in recent months. In April, South Korea said it seized more than $20 million worth of goods with falsified origin labels — the majority of which were destined for the US. The Airfreight Forwarders Association of Malaysia issued a warning in May as Chinese brokers promoted illegal rerouting services on social media. Malaysia has centralized the issuance of certificates of origin with its Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry, while tapping its customs agency to help curb transshipment. Thailand has expanded its watch list for high-risk products, including solar panels, cars and parts, and is mulling stricter penalties for violators. Casey Barnett, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Cambodia, is already seeing the changes in action. One factory that exports to major US retailers, including Walmart, Home Depot and Lowe's, said that customs officials were very carefully reviewing their products before being sent to the US, he said. 'It's creating some additional paperwork and a little bit of red tape here,' Barnett said. A senior manager at a logistics company in Cambodia, who asked not to be identified because the matter is sensitive, said export processing time has now stretched to as much as 14 working days — double what it was before. But in Indonesia, getting a certificate of origin is fairly quick and painless when goods are marked for export, often just requiring a product list and a letter to the provincial trade office, according to Wirawasta. Authorities prioritize checking products that enter the country to ensure they pay the right duties and comply with regulations, he explained. It's rare for them to inspect factories where an export good was supposedly made. So much so that sometimes, Chinese companies don't even need to muster up some local processing. 'The T-shirt could be finished in China, with a 'Made in Indonesia' label already sewn on,' Wirawasta said. 'Some traders won't even bother to unload the goods from the shipping container,' he added. 'Unloading costs money.'
Fashion Network
03-07-2025
- Business
- Fashion Network
Trump aims to shut trade loopholes China uses to evade tariffs
President Donald Trump 's two-tiered trade deal with Vietnam aims squarely at practices China has long used to skirt US tariffs: The widespread legal shifting of production to Southeast Asian factories and the murkier and illegal 'origin washing' of exports through their ports. The agreement slaps a 20% tariff on Vietnamese exports to the US and a 40% levy on goods deemed to be transshipped through the country. With details still scarce, economists said much will hinge on the framework Washington establishes to determine what it sees as 'Made in Vietnam' and what it sees as transshipments. Complicating matters is the fact that Chinese businesses have rushed to set up shop across Southeast Asia since Trump launched his first trade war back in 2018. The lion's share of Vietnam's exports to the US are goods like Airpods, phones or other products assembled with Chinese components in a factory in Vietnam and then shipped to America. That's not illegal. 'A lot will depend on how the 40% tariffs are applied. If the Trump administration keeps it targeted, it should be manageable,' said Roland Rajah, lead economist at the Lowy Institute in Sydney. 'If the approach is too broad and blunt, then it could be quite damaging' for China, Vietnam and for the US, which will have to pay higher import prices, he said. The think tank estimates that 28% of Vietnamese exports to the US were made up of Chinese content in 2022, up from 9% in 2018. Pham Luu Hung, chief economist at SSI Securities Corp. in Hanoi, said a 40% levy on transshipped goods would have limited impact on Vietnam's economy because they aren't of Vietnamese origin in the first place. Re-routed exports accounted for just 16.5% of Vietnam's shipments to the US in 2021, a share that's likely declined over the past couple of years amid stronger enforcement actions by both governments, Hung said. 'An important caveat is that the rules of origin remain under negotiation,' Hung said. 'In practice, these rules may have a greater impact than the tariff rates themselves.' Duncan Wrigley, chief China economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said he's skeptical the latest deal will be effective in stamping out Chinese exports via Vietnam to the US. 'The devil is in the details, but I think China's exports will either go via other markets to the US, or some value-added will be done in Vietnam so the product counts as made in Vietnam, rather than a transshipment,' he said. As officials across Asia rushed to negotiate lower US tariff levels with their US counterparts this year, Chinese businesses have been just as quick to ramp up their exports through alternative channels in order to skirt punitive US levies. Shipments from China to Southeast Asia have reached record highs in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam this year. And there's been a 'significant increase in correlation' to the region's increase in exports to the US during the same period, Citigroup Inc. economists said in a recent report. Much of that is likely due to the shifting of legitimate production across the region. Goods destined for the US market may be sent from their factories in Southeast Asia, and what they make in their factories in China will be sent to the rest of the world, said Derrick Kam, Asia economist at Morgan Stanley. 'If you try to represent that in the trade data, it will look exactly like rerouting, but it's not,' Kam said. 'It's essentially the supply chain working itself out.' But it's transshipment that's been a major concern for Trump's top trade advisers including Peter Navarro, who described Vietnam as 'essentially a colony of communist China' during an April interview with Fox News. And it's not just been happening in Vietnam. Not long after Trump unveiled his 'Liberation Day' tariffs on April 2, garment makers in Indonesia started receiving offers from Chinese companies to be 'partners in transshipment,' said Redma Gita Wirawasta, chairman of the Indonesian Filament Yarn and Fiber Producers Association. Chinese products would be rerouted to Indonesia, undergo minimal processing like repacking or relabeling, then secure a certification that they were made in the Southeast Asian country, Wirawasta said. When the goods are then exported to the US, they'd be subject to the 10% universal levy that Trump has imposed on nearly all countries, instead of the tariff for China that still equates to an effective level of over 50%, even after a recent 'deal' that lowered levies from a peak of 145%. With the huge scope for arbitrage, coupled with little policing, that process will prove tough to stamp out. 'Chinese exporters and their affiliates and partners in Southeast Asia are highly skilled at adapting to changing rules, identifying loopholes, and sometimes overstating the extent of value-add by non-China countries,' said Gabriel Wildau, managing director at advisory firm Teneo Holdings LLC in New York. Some final assembly or transshipment may shift to rival Southeast Asian transshipment hubs like Cambodia, Thailand and Singapore, or farther afield to Turkey, Hungary or Poland, Wildau said. 'Another possibility is that the definitions and enforcement mechanisms are fuzzy, rendering the latest deal cosmetic and toothless,' he said. 'Rigorous enforcement would also require a significant boost of resources to enable US customs to verify compliance with the tougher rules of origin.' There have been efforts across the region to at least be seen to be making an effort to curb the practice. Indeed, Vietnam has made a big deal about cracking down on trade fraud and illegal activity in recent months. In April, South Korea said it seized more than $20 million worth of goods with falsified origin labels — the majority of which were destined for the US. The Airfreight Forwarders Association of Malaysia issued a warning in May as Chinese brokers promoted illegal rerouting services on social media. Malaysia has centralized the issuance of certificates of origin with its Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry, while tapping its customs agency to help curb transshipment. Thailand has expanded its watch list for high-risk products, including solar panels, cars and parts, and is mulling stricter penalties for violators. Casey Barnett, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Cambodia, is already seeing the changes in action. One factory that exports to major US retailers, including Walmart, Home Depot and Lowe's, said that customs officials were very carefully reviewing their products before being sent to the US, he said. 'It's creating some additional paperwork and a little bit of red tape here,' Barnett said. A senior manager at a logistics company in Cambodia, who asked not to be identified because the matter is sensitive, said export processing time has now stretched to as much as 14 working days — double what it was before. But in Indonesia, getting a certificate of origin is fairly quick and painless when goods are marked for export, often just requiring a product list and a letter to the provincial trade office, according to Wirawasta. Authorities prioritize checking products that enter the country to ensure they pay the right duties and comply with regulations, he explained. It's rare for them to inspect factories where an export good was supposedly made. So much so that sometimes, Chinese companies don't even need to muster up some local processing. 'The T-shirt could be finished in China, with a 'Made in Indonesia' label already sewn on,' Wirawasta said. 'Some traders won't even bother to unload the goods from the shipping container,' he added. 'Unloading costs money.'
