Maria speaks for many American buyers: even though tariff exemptions for small parcels haven’t returned to the old levels, at least there’s now a 90-day window of relative stability. So her mindset is simple — buy now, stock up while it lasts!
This sentiment quickly rippled through to Chinese cross-border sellers. Liu Yong noticed that old customers who had delayed orders due to tariffs a month ago were now returning. One of his friends, who sells artificial flowers, even landed U.S. orders worth over 600,000 yuan in just a week.
Market confidence is bouncing back. In one seller’s group chat, someone declared: “The U.S. market is back!”
Liu Yong’s wedding dress business on AliExpress has always been strong in the U.S. Why? Because weddings in America can’t seem to happen without China. According to the American Bridal and Prom Industry Association, 90% of wedding dresses sold in the U.S. are made in China, with over 1 million dresses shipped to the U.S. annually—enough to cover 500 American football fields.
Many of those dresses come directly from AliExpress. Over the past three years, the wedding dress category has grown more than 50% annually on the platform. Many American brides now know: you can find high-quality, affordable gowns on AliExpress.
January through May is peak wedding planning season. In the first four months of this year, Liu Yong’s sales were thriving. News about U.S. tariffs kept popping up, but Liu and his peers didn’t take it seriously at first. “So what if tariffs go up? Americans won’t stop getting married,” they joked.
When the tariffs actually hit, Liu’s strategy was simple: raise prices. Wedding dresses typically take over three months to produce, and tariffs might continue rising during that time. To stay profitable, Liu and his team decided to “raise prices just a little.”
Fortunately, it didn’t hurt business much. Buyers could absorb the cost increases. Liu’s core products sell for $600–$800 USD per dress — not cheap by AliExpress standards. But according to Business Insider, the average retail price of a wedding dress in the U.S. is over $2,000. That means American bridal shops can still triple or quadruple the price once the dress arrives.
“I’m not jealous,” Liu says. “One of my U.S. clients resells my dresses at 10 times the cost. She adds some custom designs for local brides — a kind of secondary processing.”
Of course, some savvy American buyers — often brides or their family members — buy directly from AliExpress. For them, nothing matters more than the wedding day. Tariffs are uncertain. But the wedding date? That’s set in stone.
“About 80% of our clients still buy even after price hikes,” Liu explains. “Because compared to local stores, we’re still much more affordable.”
In Liu’s warehouse, most gowns come from Suzhou, with prices ranging from $200 to over $1,000 depending on the level of intricate beadwork. Since many of these details must be done by hand, the more complex the design, the longer the production — and the higher the cost.
China’s wedding dress industry developed over decades in cities like Suzhou, Chaozhou, Xiamen, and Lu’an. Each region has its strengths, but their shared advantage is deep experience. According to Qichacha data, China has over 110,000 registered wedding dress companies, with hundreds of thousands of seasoned workers — many of whom have spent their careers making bridal gowns.
These are crafts you can’t learn in just a year or two.
Suzhou, in particular, has built a complete industrial chain. From skilled workers to materials to final assembly, Liu says, “Within a 5km radius in Suzhou, you can find everything you need to solve any production problem.”
After tariffs hit, one U.S. client vented to Liu: “I just don’t get it. We’ve built such a great workflow over the years — and now we’re being told to abandon the China supply chain? Does anyone really expect Americans to start sewing wedding dresses? It’s absurd.”
Liu understands their frustration. Some of his best-selling styles in the U.S. are already five-year-old designs in China — but they’re proven winners with local brides. Tariffs or not, asking customers to drop the Chinese supply chain overnight just isn’t realistic.
Through these conversations, Liu realized: they’re all part of the same web. A network that stretches across the Pacific Ocean, connecting factories and workers, e-commerce platforms, online merchants, American bridal shop owners, and independent designers.
This web of people and partnerships is what’s withstanding the pressure of tariffs.
On AliExpress, seasoned merchants typically operate in 2–3 key global markets. In response to U.S. tariff pressures, the platform has rolled out seller protections — updating return policies, assisting with post-tax pricing, and connecting sellers to other Alibaba platforms for business expansion.
In leaked notes from an internal AliExpress strategy meeting, it’s clear: both the platform and merchants are actively seeking solutions.
Just before this year’s “618” mid-year sales event（China’s major annual e-commerce sales festival held on June 18, roughly equivalent to China’s “mid-year Black Friday.”）, Liu noticed rising sales in Europe and the Middle East. After speaking with AliExpress reps, he decided to create a line of style-customized dresses tailored to those markets.
Friends told him they were also seeing increased orders from non-U.S. countries. One joked in the group chat: “All roads lead to Rome. With enough orders from different places, who’s afraid of tariffs?”
Eventually, word spread: AliExpress had ramped up ad spending in these regions, helping merchants reach new markets.
During a recent team meeting, Liu shared his perspective: “Right now, we must stay grounded yet be bold. After this U.S. tariff turbulence, we still need to stay in the market. But Europe and the Middle East also have huge untapped potential. Maybe without the tariffs, we wouldn’t have broken out of our America-centric thinking. But now we see — the U.S. is just one node in a global network of opportunities.”
After the tariffs were reduced, Liu’s team considered reaching out to past customers to share the update. With platform subsidies in place, any excess duties could be refunded.
“Maintaining long-term trust matters,” Liu adds. “Even small gestures help.”
During the height of the tariff crisis, Liu received a message from a client — the same one who had hesitated months earlier before placing her order. After the wedding, she sent him a photo of herself, beaming with joy.
It wasn’t easy — it never had been. But Liu and countless other Chinese entrepreneurs kept going for the same reason: making people happy came first. That hadn’t changed.