President Donald Trump could “continue his legacy” of fighting animal abuse by imposing tariffs on high-cruelty Chinese animal products, PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk wrote in a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick this week.
PETA is requesting tariffs on a variety of goods whose producers engage in outlandish abuses including dog leather – often mislabeled and sold as “leather” to Americans – live-plucked goose down, and ejiao, a form of gelatin made from donkeys allegedly used to boost blood health. In remarks to Breitbart News, Newkirk explained that, while some of these products may sound exotic, America is one of the biggest markets for cashmere, angola, and even ejiao, a fixture in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).
Retailers are increasingly aware of the prodigious amount of animal abuse that occurs in the supply chain for these products and are thus slowly eliminating them from inventories in the West, Newkirk added, but suggested that tariffs are a short-term improvement to the situation as the group increases awareness of the horrors fueling the trades in question.
As one of the world’s largest animal rights organizations, PETA’s priority is to combat the systematic abuse of animals around the world. Newkirk noted other major concerns with the animal products highlighted in her letter to Lutnick, however, including the fact that much of China’s “leather” is “intentionally mislabeled” to obscure that it may come from abused dogs the risk of “zoonotic disease transmission” given the “unsanitary conditions” many animals endure.
“Unlike our strong statutes in the U.S., China lacks a unified national law that explicitly prohibits cruelty to animals,” Newkirk wrote to Lutnick in her letter, shared to Breitbart News.
“Donkeys are imported into China to meet the demand for ejiao used in folk medicines. PETA Asia investigations blew the lid off their violent abuse, with workers seen beating terrified donkeys and smashing young donkeys in the head with sledgehammers,” she explained. The angora, down and feather, and cashmere trades, she continued, involve “workers ripping the fur off live rabbits as the animals scream, tying down goats and using sharp metal tools to tear out their hair, and ripping live geese’s feathers out, leaving bloody wounds, while the birds cry out and struggle.”
Noting Trump’s role in signing the 2019 Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture (PACT) Act, Newkirk asked Lutnick to “consider recommending tariffs on these Chinese imports to continue his legacy.”
Ejiao is a gelatin made out of donkey skin. A 2018 PETA Asia exposé revealed that Chinese producers of ejiao engage in extreme violence to create the product: “donkeys are bashed in the head with a sledgehammer and skinned alive so that their skins can be boiled down to make donkey-skin gelatin.” A 2023 Congressional report explained that the product appears in traditional Chinese medicine products and in health supplements as many “consider it a blood tonic and may take it to enrich blood, cure anemia, stop bleeding, improve the immune system, prevent cancer, and treat insomnia and dizziness, among other purposes.”
“One stakeholder group estimates the United States imports $12 million worth of ejiao each year,” the Congressional report documented.
Newkirk told Breitbart News that the United States is the world’s third-largest importer of the product and noted that awareness of the origin of the product has helped reduce its prevalence in health products.
Live dogs and cats for meat sales and butchery outside Yulin, China, 24 May 2025 (Contributed)
“While eBay has pledged to stop selling ejiao products, they can still be purchased from Amazon, Etsy, Yami.com, and other online retailers,” she explained.
“Any industry that keeps densely packed animals in unsanitary conditions increases the risk of zoonotic disease transmission—witness Wuhan,” Newkirk explained, referring to the Chinese government’s original explanation for the outbreak of novel coronavirus in that city, “wildlife sold illegally in a Wuhan seafood market.”
“The threat is especially heightened in the ejiao trade, as donkeys are stoic by nature and may not show signs of illness or distress,” she continued. “Diseased animals may go undetected and trigger infections that could spread over an enormous network of animals and people.”
“Additionally, a recent study published in Nature revealed that dozens of new viruses have been detected in animals in China, including those on fur farms, providing damning evidence of the fur industry’s public health risk,” she added.
In addition to ejiao, Newkirk noted, “the U.S. imports approximately $1.9 billion in down feathers (commonly used in bedding and outerwear and sold practically everywhere) from China” and “some 90-95% of all angora sold in the U.S. is imported from China; it’s sold on Amazon, Etsy, Yarn.com, and numerous fiber retailers.”
“China also holds the title of the largest exporter of cashmere in the world, supplying about $354 million of the $512 million cashmere garments imported to the U.S. in 2024,” she added.
Dog leather presents the problem of potential fraud. According to Newkirk, “many mass-market retailers import cheap animal skins from China—and because it’s intentionally mislabeled (obviously no one would wish to buy anything labeled “dog leather” here), there’s no way of knowing what (or whom) you’re buying.”
“A PETA Asia investigation in China revealed that dogs are bludgeoned and killed so that their skins can be turned into leather gloves, belts, jacket collar trim, cat toys, and other accessories that are sold all around the world,” she noted.
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Newkirk explained that the most likely products to include mislabeled dog or cat leather are inexpensive “leather” products, and that “PETA encourages everyone to choose pleather or vegan leather, which can be made from innovative and sustainable materials like apples or cactus and is durable, fashionable, and cruelty-free.”
“PETA is calling for tariffs because making these products cost-prohibitive is more achievable in the short term,” Newkirk stated. “But compassionate shoppers can make a difference right now by ditching animal leather, angora, cashmere, and other animal products and choosing only vegan materials that are now available everywhere, with many made from eco-friendly plants and recycled synthetics that no animals were harmed and killed for.”
The Trump administration is currently in the process of overhauling America’s economic relationship with nearly every large trade partner, resulting in financial agreements worth billions of dollars with the European Union, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Negotiations with China, the world’s second-largest economy and America’s main geopolitical rival, have moved slowly and tensely as Trump seeks a more balanced trade relationship and independence from China’s supply chains. Lutnick, to whom PETA addressed its appeal, has been part of a main team negotiating with Beijing to come to an agreement on tariffs to limit Chinese influence in the American market, among other core issues.
Lutnick has expressed comfort with the use of tariffs to protect American consumers. Asked during a recent interview about concerns that tariffs on Chinese goods would hurt Americans, he noted that the current 55-percent tariff rate would hurt China more than America.
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“We didn’t feel it, right? Remember when it was 145%, did you feel it? But I’ll tell you what, their factories were closing all over the place,” Lutnick told Fox News. “So, Donald Trump understands, he doesn’t need to do a deal with China. The idea is we’ve got a 30% tariff on them for this term, 25 from his last term so they’re paying 55%. And you know what he is thinking? That’s pretty good. Let’s just stay calm, stay cool.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has similarly suggested that the urgency to cut a deal lies squarely with the Chinese, not with the U.S. government. Speaking at a Breitbart News event last week, Bessent explained that, in his most recent discussion with Chinese Communist Party officials, “they were a little on their heels, because the week before, we had just done the Japanese trade deal.”
“So our largest trading partners we have trade deals with, so the Chinese, who like to project strength and under this monolithic view, they were on their heels,” he continued, “because it was like, ‘Listen, guys, this is the way it is, and you’ve got a pretty good deal going, but the rest of the world is now with us. And you’re not going to get a special deal.”
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