Market Wire

Taiwan Overtakes China as the Top Hand Tools Supplier

China supplied 54.3% of U.S. hand tools imports in 2018 and 27.1% in 2025, a 27.2-point shift. Taiwan now leads the lane at 30.0%, while Vietnam added the most share over the period at 11.0 points. Whether the re-route…

China supplied 54.3% of U.S. hand tools imports in 2018 and 27.1% in 2025, a 27.2-point shift. Taiwan now leads the lane at 30.0%, while Vietnam added the most share over the period at 11.0 points. Whether the re-route is actually cheaper turns on duty and freight, not the invoice price.

The year-by-year track of China's share: 2018: 54.3% · 2019: 50.2% · 2020: 47.8% · 2021: 43.5% · 2022: 38.3% · 2023: 36.5% · 2024: 34.9% · 2025: 27.1%. A shift this steady across seven years is structural — tariff differentials, buyer de-risking, and capacity built elsewhere — rather than a single year's price story.

For a buyer the actionable question is the landed comparison: the new lane's invoice price plus its effective duty plus its freight, against the old one's. The tariff monitor carries the per-country effective rates for this family, which is where that arithmetic starts.

Published 2026-08-17.