6 minBusiness
MAGA Merch Sellers Close Stores as Sales Fall After 2024 Election Peak
Independent sellers of Trump-branded merchandise are closing stores, cutting prices and pivoting to patriotic goods as demand drops now that Trump cannot run again. One seller who moved $63 million has shut three shops.
Independent retailers who built businesses around Donald Trump's «Make America Great Again» merchandise are closing stores and slashing prices as sales retreat from the record levels of the 2024 election cycle. With Trump constitutionally barred from seeking another presidential term, sellers across the country say the demand that once drove seven-day workweeks has cooled sharply, forcing a rethink of a trade that flourished for nearly a decade.
Richard Kligman, who runs a Trump Super Store alongside his brother's kite shop in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, said sales of Trump-branded goods have fallen 39% from their 2024 levels. He opened the storefront in 2018 after customers began asking for MAGA hats and flags, and business boomed between the 2020 and 2024 elections. Now he wants out. «You have to read the writing on the wall that as we go into '27, it's definitely going to fall off, and I'd like to be out of it as much as I could be by the end of '27,» he said. «It's absolutely gone down, but it had to because he can't run again.»
The pullback is visible across the sector. Steven Slaton, who has operated the Trumped Store and Coffee Shop in Show Low, Arizona, with his wife Karen for a decade, described current sales as «night and day» compared with the 2016 and 2024 election seasons. He estimated September sales were down 20% to 25% from the same month a year earlier and has marked hats and shirts that once sold for $30 down to $10. «It's like everybody took a big, deep breath and then everybody's looking for a new type of gear,» he said. Slaton attributed part of the decline to customers having less money to spend as food, housing and gas prices strain household budgets.
At least three independent Trump merchandise stores have closed this year, in Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Tennessee, including one that had averaged 350 sales a day at about $60 each. Sany Dash, who said she has sold $63 million in Trump merchandise over nine years, closed all three of her USA Trump Stores — two in Texas, in Gainesville and Arlington, and one in Loveland, Colorado — because revenue fell too far. She may open a single store in Dallas, but plans to focus on patriotic-themed jewelry and clothing sold at rallies and political events, where she estimates 40% to 50% of attendees buy merchandise. «The stores are not doing well, but the rallies are doing incredibly good,» she said. «We have to look at, logistically, where we're going to open up our new store, and it may not say Trump — it may just say 'patriotic merch,' I don't know yet.»
The slowdown has also reached manufacturers. Eric Turney, sales director at custom product maker The Monterey Company, said the firm earned about $250,000 in 2024 producing MAGA hats, keychains and buttons for nine wholesalers, but now has only three regular wholesalers for the same goods. Monterey averaged 15 merchandise orders a month in 2024 but has received just 13 in total from 2025 through this year. «Once he went into office, demand really dropped off the face of the cliff,» Turney said.
Online interest has followed the same trajectory. After peaking in December 2018 and November 2024, Google search interest in the term «MAGA hat» has fallen 95% as of October, according to Google Trends data. Amazon sellers reported an estimated $140 million in Trump-themed merchandise from April through September 2024, according to e-commerce marketing platform Omnisend, a figure that now looks unlikely to be matched.
Rallies for Republican midterm candidates have provided a partial bright spot. Ronald Solomon, president of The MAGA Mall, a wholesaler and retailer of Republican and conservative-branded products, said rallies renewed demand for MAGA and «Trump 2028» hats, and he sold «a tremendous amount» at an event in Vandalia, Ohio. The Trump Organization itself began offering $50 «Trump 2028» hats in April 2025. Still, Solomon said his MAGA product sales in recent months are down 34% from 2024, a decline he attributes to 2026 being a midterm year. «There's no way I expected it to be as brisk as a presidential year,» he said.
The merchandise slump comes as economic dissatisfaction weighs on Trump politically. A Fox News poll from Oct. 14 found that 77% of registered voters disapproved of his handling of inflation and 70% disapproved of his handling of the economy, while his overall approval rating fell to 36%, the lowest recorded by Fox News during either of his two presidencies. For sellers who spent years riding the MAGA wave, the question now is whether patriotic merchandise without Trump's name can sustain the business he built.
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