Trump’s tariffs are coming for bootleg sports merch

The Trump administration’s promises to impose massive tariffs on imported goods has put several local industries on edge — from shipping to real estate to the Philly-based fabricator that makes the massive tarp covering the field at Citizens Bank Park between games.

But there’s another lesser-known ballpark-adjacent industry, whose mom-and-pop operations and reliance on the complex global supply chain also risks being impacted by the Trump tariffs: bootleg Philadelphia sports merch, printed on garments manufactured abroad.

They’re a common sight at every Phillies, Eagles, Sixers, Flyers, and even Union home stand, on neighborhood corners and in Wawa parking lots. Sellers hawk knockoff Saquon Barkley jerseys and Nick Castellanos T-shirts from long U-line plastic folding tables or battered shopping carts stocked with day-old pretzels and marked-up bottles of water.

Despite the brazenness of their enterprise — some install themselves in full view of uniformed police and yellow-clad security detail — ballpark bootleg merch vendors are a cagey lot. “I just started,” shrugged one merchant, when asked how prices have fluctuated in the past few weeks. “I don’t know nothing,” said another, stationed just across Pattison Avenue.

Closer to the Xfinity Live! sports bar complex, another seller is slightly more helpful. Asked if prices have gone up since the introduction of broad international trade tariffs, he responded with a “Not yet.”

Other merchants were more obliging when it comes to explaining why knockoff T-shirts and hats have yet to be affected by volatility in the global supply trade.

A seller stationed along South Darien Street explained that, despite the common conception that most low price, unprinted shirts and hats (“blanks,” as they’re called in the biz) hail from China, a great many actually are produced in factories across Asia and South America.

“They’re all different,” she said, rifling through stacks of shirts to check the tags. “Honduras … This one’s from India. So really, there’s no China!”

(While China has faced some of the stiffest threatened tariffs, there is, as of publication, no tariff on goods from Honduras. Tariffs on Indian imports have been temporarily delayed.)

Most merchants stock up before the season starts in March — often filling 30-gallon bins with shirts and hats in a range of designs — buying in bulk from a network of local wholesalers who print and distribute the gear. Much of that production happened months ago, during the mid-winter MLB preseason.

» READ MORE: A day in the life of a Phillies parking lot shirt bootlegger

A vendor stationed outside of SEPTA’s Oregon Station on Broad Street, ahead of a recent Phillies tilt against the Arizona Diamondbacks, confirmed that his personal bottom line hasn’t been affected much.

“I’m already a third party,” he said. “And as far as I know, everything I buy is made right here in the U.S.A.”

While blanks, as well as printing supplies, may be imported, the actual manufacturing of the shirts and hats tends to occur, surreptitiously, stateside.

According to this seller, prices have remained steady.

He’d usually buy a powder blue T-shirt emblazoned with Bryce Harper’s name and number for $8, and then resell it for $15. A tidy 87.5% markup, given bootleggers rarely deal with standard overhead costs like rent, utilities, or the remittance of sales taxes.

Corey Danks, a Philly-based artist who sells more boutique unofficial sports merch online, said that tariffs are impacting customer behavior. “The fear of it has been a bigger issue than the actual supply chain issues themselves,” he said. “My sales are down. And that‘s because people don’t know what the hell is going on. They don’t want to spend money at the moment.”

Danks, who prints his merch locally, stocked up on T-shirts manufactured across the Caribbean or Bangladesh when he noticed the president threatening tariffs on the campaign trail.

Closer to the stadium district, mass-produced shirts and hats — including multicolored tie-dyed Phillies bucket hats, and Veterans Stadium caps commemorating “Pride, Pretzels, Prison” — retail for closer to $10.

“Since the beginning of the season, everything’s been the same price,” a seller said, before gesturing toward Citizens Bank Park. “We don’t rob people, like in there.”

The greatest driver in the price and popularity of bootleg sports merchandise is not Trump’s tariffs, or even the general economic bloat of inflation, but the routine price-gouging practiced by the officially licensed merchandise authorized by teams and leagues.

Beyond being less expensive, some fans swear by the quality of bootleg merchandise, especially since controversial sports apparel manufacturer Fanatics began monopolizing the pro sports merch game.

“Fanatics is really crappy quality,” said Dan McQuade, a Philadelphia writer and T-shirt historian, who curated a 2024 art show showcasing his personal collection of bootleg Eagles merch. Danks called the Fanatics merch “absolute trash.”

For McQuade, bootlegs convey dimensions of a team’s fandom that franchise and league owners overlook. They often don’t represent the team in a “necessarily positive light,” McQuade said.

“When the Eagles are bad, people like to wear shirts about how the Eagles are bad. …There’s a guy outside the stadium who has been selling ‘The Eagles Are Playing Like S—, Pass Me Another Beer’ shirts for well over a decade.”

McQuade cited another recent example from the Phillies 2022 season. When third baseman Alec Bohm committed a few crucial errors and was roundly booed by an unfriendly home crowd. Bohm was caught on camera mouthing “I f— hate this place.”

Bootleggers seized on the viral moment, rapidly rushing “I F— Hate This Place” T-shirts to market. A few months later, as the Phils were slugging their way through a thrilling World Series run, the slogan was replaced with the considerably more upbeat “I F— Love This Place.”

The shirts become folky indexes of the team — and city’s — spirit at a particular place in time. And it‘s these dashed-off, rushed-to-market items that may be impacted by rising costs, or import tariffs.

Merchandise produced to seize upon these buzzy moments cannot be mass manufactured in the preseason. And the necessary garments will need to be imported from Southeast Asia, China, and other territories subject to tariffs. If local printers and vendors have not overabundantly stocked up, prices may end up spiked by the Trump administration’s ongoing foreign trade wars, and erratic imposition (and subsequent, no-less-erratic elimination) of foreign trade tariffs.

Ultimately, Danks notes, any increase in material costs is passed onto the fan. “To make up the money I’m no longer making,” he said. “But I’ve seen an insane increase in what people are willing to pay for T-shirts lately. Some people charge as much $40 to $45” for one.

There is, almost certainly, a ceiling on such inflation — a point at which even the most die-hard customer can no longer economically justify a rising cost. Can the local fan markets, however ungovernable their passions, really support a $65 “DALLAS SUCKS” T-shirt? Even in Philly? In this economy?