‘Made in USA’ is trending on Amazon, and sellers are leaning in

Jason Boyce, a veteran Amazon merchant who now runs Avenue7Media, a consulting business for sellers, also said his agency is seeing five times the search volume for “made in the USA” this month compared to the same month last year. 

But while these numbers suggest there’s increased consumer demand for American-made goods, industry experts say that curiosity doesn’t yet appear to be translating into widespread purchasing behavior.

“There’s a lot of curiosity about ‘Made in the USA,’ but it’s not driving a lot of revenue growth,” Boyce said. “I don’t think that group of customers [who buy American-made goods] is getting any larger, at least not yet.”

Scott Needham, the founder of SmartScout, agreed. “Maybe people just want to browse and see what’s actually made in the USA — not to actually buy something, but just to discover what’s possible to purchase from the U.S.” 

For brands, the search volume spike has prompted a new round of marketing experiments. Avenue7Media recently started targeting “Made in USA” keywords for the first time — something it had previously avoided due to poor performance, in part because Amazon customers are typically more interested in finding the lowest-priced item rather than focusing on where the product was manufactured. “That significant increase in that traffic spike made it interesting to us to start testing it with clients,” Boyce said. 

He added that brands are also updating product images to include “Made in USA” stamps or patriotic visuals earlier in their listing galleries. In the past, such branding may have appeared in a product’s fourth or fifth image slot, if at all. Now, brands are moving those visuals up to the first or second image to make the message immediately clear to shoppers.

That approach aligns with what Dayne Rusch, founder of Vyper Industrial, is seeing. “There’s a big push, in terms of updating creatives right now, to really put the flag at the forefront,” Rusch said.

Among those is Scott McIntosh, owner of Cell Phone Seat, who manufactures his viral cupholder phone mount in Detroit, Michigan.  McIntosh told Modern Retail that he’s updating marketing content on Amazon to lean more into the “Made in America” messaging, including a new hero image that includes the language “no tariffs applied.” He also plans to update his SEO to include “Made in America” in his product listings, including the title. 

Vyper, which manufactures industrial products domestically, has seen a recent uptick in sales, which Rusch partially attributes to growing consumer awareness around where their products come from.  “Historically, it wasn’t that effective,” he said. “But now everyone’s talking about it.”

At least one brand, Carrywell, which is headquartered in Miami, Florida and manufactures its goods in Cambodia, has even added “Not Made in China” to its product listing titles. New tariffs announced in April include a 145% duty on many Chinese goods, a staggering figure that far exceeds import taxes applied to products from other nations.

Despite increased consumer curiosity for American-made goods, some challenges remain. Chief among them: Amazon’s core customer base has historically been driven by price and convenience, not country-of-origin concerns. For eight years in a row, Amazon has been the lowest-priced online retailer, with an average price advantage of 14% over its competitors, according to e-commerce analytics firm Profitero. In other words, curiosity alone may not be enough to convince price-conscious Amazon shoppers to click “Buy Now” on American-made goods. 

Rusch said he hopes Amazon will implement a country-of-origin badge to spotlight American-made brands even more, similar to the “Small Business” badge it offers. Overall, Amazon has said relatively little publicly about tariffs, although it recently surveyed some sellers about how Trump’s trade war was impacting their businesses, as Modern Retail previously reported. 

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told CNBC in an interview earlier this month that the company is prioritizing keeping prices low for customers. That has included “some strategic forward inventory buys” and renegotiating terms with suppliers, he said.

Some of Amazon’s rivals have introduced ways for consumers and sellers to navigate the complexities of tariffs. Etsy, for example, has made it easier for buyers to find domestic products by featuring local merchants on its website and app through curated shopping pages and seller spotlights. Similarly, Shopify has introduced new features, including tools that help manage duties at checkout and filter products by country of origin. 

While the SmartScout data shows surging interest in “Made in USA” across categories like kitchenware and apparel, Needham said that interest doesn’t always equal intent. “We need more time to know if this is a flash in the pan or a sustained trend,” he said.

For now, American-made brands are leaning into the moment, but with tempered expectations. As Rusch put it, “It’s a strange cultural shift. We’ll see whether or not it sticks.”