Cyber Monday Has Come and Gone, but Where Does All This Stuff Come From?

Most Americans would like to know where the products they buy online originate.

Cyber Monday just wrapped up and deals still abound on major e-commerce platforms. It’s a good thing there are resources at hand like the 2025 Made in America Holiday Gift Guide because it’s difficult to find American-made options via big retailers like Amazon. They aren’t required to display country-of-origin labeling for the products they sell.

It’s true! U.S. labeling laws were written before the explosion of e-commerce. While whatever you buy in person at a Target or Best Buy will have where the product came from printed on the box, that’s not how it works for online marketplace. That information is only provided online at the seller’s discretion. This is in spite of opinion polling conducted by Morning Consult that shows three in four (77%) Americans think online retailers should be required to display country-of-origin labels online; 45% of respondents even expressed strong support.

Look, I do most of my shopping online on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace, where anything goes and you can buy hornet nests for hundreds of dollars (hornets typically not included), but that’s admittedly not for everyone. Consumers have the right to make informed decisions about where the products they may buy are made, and not just for transparency’s sake. It’s also an important means of supporting America’s manufacturers, makers and workers, who face a market flooded with imports. Places like TikTok Shop, SHEIN and Temu are increasingly the dominant retailers for American shoppers — and all offer deeply unreliable product information, if any.

That’s why a large majority (82%) of Americans prefer to buy Made in America goods over imports and would buy more of them if they were more widely available at major retailers. And it’s why more lawmakers should line up behind proposals like Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) and Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) legislation that mandates country-of-origin labeling for products sold online. Specifically, the legislation would:

1. require country-of-origin labeling for a product, as required by existing law, be clearly and conspicuously stated in the website’s description of the product, and

2. clear disclosure of the country in which the seller of the product is located (and, if applicable, the country in which any parent corporation of such seller is located) in the online product listing.

You can read more about the legislation here. And, while we wait for that bill to get moving, do your American-made holiday shopping with our American-made gift guide.