America imports 99% of its fireworks from China

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America imports 99% of its fireworks from China The freedom to import is quintessentially American Kuiper Jul 04, 2026

According to the American Pyrotechnics Association, 99% of the backyard consumer fireworks that Americans set off every July 4 come from China. For bigger professional fireworks displays, the number is closer to 90%. I have seen this fact presented as if it’s some sort of contradiction: how “independent” can America really claim to be if it buys all of its fireworks from a geopolitical rival? But American independence has always been about self-determination, not self-sufficiency. Isolation reduces our independence. (Consider two teenagers, one who spends their weekends socializing with peers, and another who never leaves the house: which teenager seems more “independent?”) “Independence” and “freedom” includes the freedom to buy from who we want. And so, with the freedom to choose, overwhelmingly Americans opt to purchase fireworks made in Liuyang, the Chinese city that has spent the past millennium perfecting the art.

Most backyard fireworks are still made by hand It’s a trade that Americans should be happy to make: many fireworks must be made by hand by specialists trained in handling explosive materials that are sensitive to friction. (It’s exactly the kind of process that doesn’t work well with modern manufacturing methods, where density and speed usually go hand in hand: when making explosives, it’s risky to have a high density of explosives together in the same building.) And with the industry requiring so much work to be done handling explosives by hand, “fireworks manufacturing” is not an enviable job for anyone who wants to keep all ten of their fingers. Why the Boston Tea party smugglers were “smugglers”

Many of the organizers of the Boston Tea Party were smugglers. Think about what is implied by the word “smuggler”: the Americans were, in defiance of British authority, transporting goods across international borders, breaking the law so that Americans could drink Dutch tea. Britain told the American colonists that they had to “buy domestic”: as British subjects, they were only allowed to buy tea from the British-owned East India Company that had passed through England. Funny enough, both the “British tea” and “Dutch tea” were from China. Fundamentally, the Boston Tea Party was not over the origin of the tea, but over who got to set terms of our own commerce. (The Tea Act of 1773 that inspired the Boston Tea Party actually had the effect of making British tea cheaper, effectively undercutting the Dutch contraband and making the monopoly true in practice and not just law. In principle, the thing that the American colonists rebelled against wasn’t over the price or the origin of the tea, but self-determination.) One of America’s founding acts of rebellion was over the right to buy Chinese goods on our own terms. What could be more patriotic and faithful to that spirit by exercising that right by buying and filling the sky with Chinese fireworks? The spirit of 1776

Fortunately, Americans don’t need to make fireworks, because we can buy them from the specialists in Liuyang. Meanwhile, America can use its resources to make the things that it’s comparatively good at: America can export movies, jet engines, soybeans, software, and Taylor Swift. And, as a result of trade, both participants end up richer. The case for specialization and trade was famously explored in another document from 1776:

As a child of 1776, America is in good company: this year, America and The Wealth of Nations both turn 250. Happy birthday, USA!

America imports 99% of its fireworks from China

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