Nearly all artificial Christmas trees in the world today are made in China. And with that comes an up to 30 percent tariff rate on imported Christmas products — including artificial trees. 

Kris Reisdorf is co-president of the Racine- and Sturtevant-based home and garden store Milaeger’s. On WPR’s “Wisconsin Today,” Reisdorf said tariffs are affecting their prices on artificial trees, but she’s mitigating most of the rate hike through negotiations with manufacturers and by taking on lower profit margins herself. 

“We are doing our fair share in making Christmas affordable,” Reisdorf said. “When the average person is thinking 30 percent (tariffs), that’s not by any means what they’re really paying.”

Milaeger’s “almost real” trees range from under $100 to well over $3,000. Reisdorff said she’s raised prices for all artificial trees by only around $20 compared to last year.

Residorf said tree sales are largely stable despite the uptick in tariff pricing.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll last year found that 58 percent of Americans were buying artificial trees instead of real ones. That’s up from 40 percent in 2010. 

Greg Hann owns Hann’s Christmas Farm in Oregon. Hann also sits on the Wisconsin Christmas Tree Producers Association Board and is president-elect of the National Christmas Tree Association. 

Hann told “Wisconsin Today” the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 created a surge in business for real evergreen trees and that demand has been holding relatively steady ever since. That said, Hann acknowledged real Christmas tree sales are up for him and fellow growers this year. He attributed the increase in sales to the tariffs and the fact that farmers’ supplies are finally catching up to the higher demand brought on by COVID-19. Nearly all real trees come from the United States or Canada, according to Hann. 

Hann said a recent survey by the National Christmas Tree Association found 84 percent of Christmas tree growers nationwide have kept prices the same over the last two years, and that includes his own farm. Being grown locally in Wisconsin, Hann said his business is largely unaffected by tariffs.

“It’s kind of nice to have a good supply with a stable price in this economy,” he said. 

Reisdorf said that some artificial tree manufacturers are moving operations outside of China to places like Cambodia. But most other countries in the east are also facing tariff threats. 

Instead, Reisdorf said artificial tree importers are lobbying President Donald Trump to lower his 30 percent tariffs on Christmas products like trees and ornaments, because those kinds of goods aren’t coming back to be made in the U.S.

Meanwhile, Hann said his organization is lobbying to have tariffs on artificial trees increased to 300 percent. He said the added tariff costs help create an “even playing field” between real and artificial trees, since farmers have to pay farm staff and cover fertilizer costs. 

But it isn’t always about the cost. Reisdorf said artificial trees have the benefit of lasting “forever,” essentially.

Hann said many of his customers come to the farm looking to keep up the Christmas tradition of picking out their own family tree. 

“They’re looking for that fragrance of a real tree,” he said. “They want to start that tradition of the family together. They pick the tree, they take it into their house.” 

An ongoing decline in American assimilation and a deep fear of being accused of racism were key factors in the massive fraud scheme in Minnesota that is now coming to light, according to an expert.

Minnesota is facing one of the largest social-services fraud scandals in U.S. history after federal prosecutors uncovered what they describe as “schemes stacked upon schemes” by Somali-run non-profits that siphoned hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars from child-nutrition and Medicaid housing programs.

Prosecutors have since charged more than 70 defendants, a large percentage of whom are members of Minnesota’s Somali community, securing dozens of convictions as new waves of indictments continue. The scandal has triggered state and federal investigations, congressional scrutiny, and calls for accountability over why warnings were missed and how the fraud was allowed to reach this scale.

Simon Hankinson, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, said that the decline in immigrant assimilation in America was key during an interview with Fox News Digital.

INSIDE ‘LITTLE MOGADISHU’: MINNESOTA’S BELEAGUERED SOMALI COMMUNITY UNDER A CLOUD OF FRAUD AND TRUMP ATTACKS

“Assimilation is a two-sided coin. The pressure comes from inside, from you wanting to assimilate so you can make it in the new society, but it also comes from outside, where the society says, ‘Hey, we expect you to do this. We expect you, if you want a driver’s license, to be able to speak and read English at a basic level.’ We don’t do that anymore in America. We don’t we don’t really expect anything of our immigrants,” explained Hankinson.

“There are a lot of people who are American-born,” he went on, “who really don’t like this country and what it stands for. And so, they don’t think anyone else ought to accept it and adapt to it either.”

Hankinson noted that in no way can the fraud scheme be blamed writ large on the Minnesota-Somali community, which is estimated to have around 80,000 people. He said that those involved in the scam are a minority. However, the fact that the tight-knit community has by and large not assimilated into the broader American society and customs meant that many of the factors that could have exposed the scheme earlier were not there, according to Hankinson.

“When you come from a culture that provides you with nothing from the center, everything is family, everything is clan, everything is local, then it’s almost impossible for you to understand how a federal system would work. And if your neighbor came to you and said, ‘Hey, we got this cool thing going, if you just say your kid’s autistic, I’ll give you a thousand dollars a month.’ I mean, that’s a no-brainer for an awful lot of people,” he explained.

“Even if they thought that maybe it was wrong on some level, they might think, ‘Well, hang on, in my new country, maybe that’s frowned upon,’ they’re not going to rat out the clan member, the family member,” he added.

TIM WALZ CALLED OUT BY WASHINGTON POST FOR REFUSING TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR MINNESOTA FRAUD SCANDAL

That, combined with the existence of generous taxpayer-funded welfare programs and Minnesota being what Hankinson called a “high trust state,” made the state “ill-equipped to handle fraud.”

“In Minnesota, these programs were low-hanging fruit. They were so easy to fleece, it’s almost farcical,” said Hankinson. “So, the carrot is there to commit fraud, and there’s no stick.”

He pointed to one aspect of the scheme in which prosecutors say Minnesota’s Medicaid autism program was exploited by companies recruiting families, securing fraudulent diagnoses, and billing for therapy that never happened, draining millions from the program.

“That is outrageous. Somebody should have noticed at some point that, ‘Hang on a minute, why have the autism rates in Somali kids gone from one in a hundred to like one in three or whatever it was?’” he said. “There should have been some oversight, and there again you get into the whole American racial guilt, which is a particular issue that we have, where if you’re an unscrupulous scammer, you can always play the race card, and that will often get you away with it because people are terrified.”

“Nobody likes to be called a racist. It’s about one of the worst things you could be called,” he went on. “But I do think liberal Americans, in particular white liberal Americans, are more afraid of that label than anything else. So, some of these scammers, they threatened to make a fuss about being targeted on account of race or immigrant status or religion. And that probably contributed to state authorities being a little slower.”

ILHAN OMAR SAYS SHE’S FRUSTRATED SINCE SOMALIS ARE ALSO VICTIMS IN ‘FEEDING OUR FUTURE’ SCAM

This dynamic has also played out on the national level. Following the Trump administration’s announcement of its crackdown on illegal immigrant Somalis in Minnesota, Democratic Gov. Tim Walz has accused it of “demonizing an entire group of people just by their race and their ethnicity.”

“I can’t take Tim Walz seriously, honestly, because he was the governor who was in charge while all this was happening. Where was he?” said Hankinson. “He was asleep at the switch.”

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“It’s not a question of scapegoating,” he said. “It’s a good thing to send a message, not to the Somali community per se, but to all of Minnesota and the rest of the 49 states that this is America, we have laws, we have rules. When you break those rules, you are going to get punished.”

Hankinson added that ultimately, he hopes to see many Somalis joining in the effort to crack down on the minority involved in fraud so that they can “give their community the reputation that it deserves.”