From pre-bleached straight hair wigs to wavy clipped extensions and blinged-out coffin-shaped nails, sales of Chinese-made beauty accessories are surging across the United States.

While friction over soaring Chinese exports of high-profile items such as cars and batteries forms the backdrop to this week’s presidential summit, the boom in the non-strategic beauty sector underlines China’s manufacturing prowess.

“This market is growing,” said Joe Wu, an exporter in the central city of Xuchang, known as China’s wig capital, who expects his sales to grow 40 per cent this year, driven heavily by US buyers drawn through the apps Tiktok and Instagram.

China’s US exports of hair products rose 12.4 per cent year-on-year to US$1.3 billion in the first half of 2026, customs data shows, with shipments on track to beat 2025’s full-year figure of US$2.3 billion.

It is one of the fastest-growing export categories alongside more conventional ones, such as computer parts, scooters or plastic goods.

While customs data for artificial nails is limited because they are categorised as plastic products, producers say business is booming.

Zhang Da, the owner of a 200-worker press-on nail factory in the eastern county of Donghai, says exports climbed to 70 per cent of total revenue this year from 20 per cent late in 2025, with US sales making up a large chunk.

The trend demonstrates that Beijing occupies “a unique historical position” in using scale and product upgrades to dominate global markets in both advanced and lower value-added goods, said Dan Wang, the China director of Eurasia Group.

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