A new AI-generated video believed to have been created by a Chinese TikToker depicts a depressing America under Donald Trump’s tariffs.
The video depicts overweight Americans working in sweatshops and factories, performing menial tasks while melancholic Chinese music plays in the background.
Each ‘American’ in the video looks depressed and exhausted by the amount of labor – feeding into many stereotypes about the nation’s work ethic.
The clip fades out by taking a shot at Trump’s campaign slogan, showing ‘Make America Great Again.’
Running for 32 seconds, the clip highlights the traditional manufacturing roles that have shifted to foreign countries in recent years but might come back to the US due to President Trump’s aggressive tariff policies.
Following the escalating trade tensions between the US and China, viral videos like this have begun circulating online, adding fuel to the fire of the tariff dispute as both nations retaliate with threats of imposing heavy charges on imported products.
Along with the retaliatory tariffs, a war of words has broken out after US Vice President JD Vance claimed China’s economy was fueled by ‘peasants’ during an interview with Fox News last week.
The humiliating video mocking Americans was posted by a TikTok user named Ben Lau on Monday.
To this point, Lau’s TikTok has been fairly unused, with only 1,000 followers and three other videos posted.
One X user reposted the inflammatory video and it’s already been viewed more than five million times.
‘Low skilled manufacturing will never come back to the US. Highly skilled manufacturing won’t come to the US because we gutted education and don’t have the highly skilled workforce,’ a user commented on the video.
Another user said: ‘America will become the poorest country in the world under Trump’s rule.’
However, on user made a joke, saying: ‘That sewing machine could be made in China.’
The comments appeared to be coming from both Chinese nationals and Americans who oppose the Trump Administration’s agenda.
Defending Trump’s Tariffs, which have already sparked a 4,000-point freefall on Wall Street over the last week, Vance told Fox and Friends last Thursday that, ‘we borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture.’
‘What has the globalist economy gotten the United States of America? And the answer is, fundamentally, it’s based on two principles – incurring a huge amount of debt to buy things that other countries make for us,’ the vice president said.
On Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian reacted to Vance’s comments during a news conference on Trump’s tariffs.
‘It’s both astonishing and lamentable to hear this vice president make such ignorant and disrespectful remarks,’ he said.
Meanwhile, President Trump escalated his trade war rhetoric on Monday, vowing to hit the Chinese economy with an additional 50 percent tariff unless they remove their own retaliatory import levy that was announced Friday.
Beijing threatened to charge a 34 percent tariff on US goods entering China in response to Trump’s global tariff initiative.
The president gave China until Tuesday to stand down on their 34 percent tariff threat or face retaliation.
‘If China does not withdraw its 34% increase above their already long term trading abuses by tomorrow, April 8th, 2025, the United States will impose ADDITIONAL Tariffs on China of 50 percent effective April 9th,’ Trump wrote on his Truth Social account.
The president also warned that negotiations and trade talks with China would be canceled if they refused to back down.
The war over manufacturing jobs which the new meme mocks has been raging between the US and China since President Trump’s first term in office.
Trump has consistently advocated for imposing tariffs on Chinese goods as a strategy to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US since 2017.
His core argument is that tariffs make Chinese imports more expensive, which incentivizes American companies to produce goods domestically, thereby creating jobs and reducing reliance on foreign labor.
However, China’s social media is now mocking the idea that Americans will be willing to take over these labor-intensive jobs.
