Is a Box of Ivanka Trump’s Footwear Marked ‘Tariff Exempt’?

In September 2019 an image circulated on Twitter, purportedly depicting a box of Ivanka Trump footwear products — bearing a big red stamp reading “tarriff [sic] exempt”:

The image was spread out across posts, replies, and anti-Trump pages. No additional information typically appeared alongside it, just visual context suggesting that the boxes were photographed in some sort of receiving area.

Although the red “tarriff [sic] exempt” stamp appeared to be a digital alteration, there is still better proof the image is dishonest.

A reverse image search indicates that the image was first crawled in August 2019, which generally means it first appeared not long before that. But when those results were sorted by date, the “tarriff [sic] exempt” Ivanka Trump footwear box was on the fifth of six pages of results.

On the first page of results, the first crawled image traced back to a post by the now-defunct Gawker.com. Published on March 23 2016 (prior to Trump’s 2017 inauguration), the Gawker post reported:

EXCLUSIVE PHOTO: Ivanka Trump’s Shoes Definitely Made in China

Donald Trump, who once claimed to have ended his partnership with Macy’s over the fact that his “shirts and ties were made in China,” is in for a rude awakening as far as his daughter’s own fashion line is concerned. Exclusive photos shared with Gawker confirm that Ivanka Trump, the smokin’ hot apple of her father’s eye, is in fact part of the problem.

The photograph below was snapped by tipster Mike Twombly at Bloomingdales on 59th St. in New York. Look closely—can you spot the daughter’s betrayal of everything her father stands for?

Gawker went on to insert a series of increasingly-cropped images, repeatedly highlighting the “Made in China” aspect of the box. Nowhere on the box did the words “tarriff [sic] exempt” appear, and Ivanka Trump’s father was not even elected president at the time of the post — thereby rendering him unable to cut the sweetheart deal implied by the altered image.