Even with cumulative tariff rates exceeding 100% on some product categories, China remains the default sourcing origin for most wholesale importers. That's not inertia — it's the math still working out in China's favor for most of what a distributor actually orders.
Why the cost advantage survives tariffs
Integrated supply chains and manufacturing scale routinely offset tariff exposure that would sink a smaller producer elsewhere — a Chinese factory's raw-material access, labor efficiency and overcapacity-driven pricing can absorb a substantial duty and still land cheaper than production started from scratch in an alternative country. That's especially true in categories, tires among them, where the alternative-origin supply chain simply doesn't have the same depth yet.
Where it's actually shifting
The categories seeing real diversification away from China are ones with the highest cumulative tariff exposure and the lowest barrier to relocating production — simpler assembly work with commoditized inputs, not capital-intensive manufacturing requiring specialized tooling and integrated component supply. Tires, appliances and similarly complex manufactured goods are moving far more slowly, if at all.
What this means for a distributor's sourcing strategy
For categories where China's structural advantage holds, diversifying sourcing away from it usually trades a real cost advantage for a marginal tariff hedge — often the wrong trade. The more useful hedge is diversifying destination markets and quoting landed cost against the worst-case duty scenario, not diversifying origin countries for products where no comparable alternative yet exists.
"Made in China" isn't winning on price by default anymore — it's winning because the underlying supply-chain economics still outperform the alternative, tariffs included, for most of what a wholesale distributor actually stocks.