Inside the factory manufacturing Trump and Harris caps that could predict the 2024 presidential race winner

By Jon Michael Raasch, Political Reporter In Washington, D.C., For Dailymail.Com 14:34 02 Nov 2024, updated 16:19 02 Nov 2024

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In a knife's-edge election that hinges on turnout, voter enthusiasm for one candidate over the other is a key to victory.

And what clearer signal could there be than which candidate - Donald Trump or Kamala Harris - is selling the most campaign hats?

Inside a massive, gray-brick building in New Jersey workers are churning out Harris and Trump baseball caps by the tens of thousands.

And forecasters attempting to read the mood of the nation may want to take note at the speed - and output - of their assembly lines.

'We have done work for every major presidential candidate since the year 2000,' Mitch Cahn, owner of the Unionwear factory, proudly told DailyMail.com.

His 70,000-square-foot Newark factory is the only union-run baseball cap manufacturer in the U.S. And they have been making campaign caps for three decades, starting with Bill Clinton's 1996 run for the White House.

But Cahn saw business really take off with Al Gore's bid in 2000 and also manufactured caps for both the John McCain and Barack Obama camps in 2008.

His ability to put 'Made in the USA' labels on each one is a drawing card for both campaigns and for third parties looking to buy caps supporting one candidate or another.

The fact it is a union shop has made it particularly popular for Democratic campaigns.

Amid the buzz of whirring machinery nimble hands are busily assembling 'Harris-Walz' hats as fast as they can.

Cahn told DailyMail.com his shop is churning out 100,000 caps a month for the Democratic Party ticket toppers.

In total, the firm has done over 300,000 units in the three months since Harris became the nominee, selling at a lightning pace compared to past candidates.

'She sold a lot more than Biden, and Biden was over a longer period of time,' he said.

In 2020, for example, Cahn was only asked to make 100,000 hats for Joe Biden.

They didn't sell very well and the president's reelection campaign was still trying to unload them earlier this year before Biden was forced to withdraw his candidacy.

Hillary Clinton's hats fared even worse.

'We only sold about 15,000 hats, and we were the primary supplier,' the Unionwear owner recounted.

Despite being the Democrats' favorite merchandise manufacturer, Unionwear has also been getting a couple of thousand MAGA hat orders a month on average.

After crunching the numbers, Cahn revealed that the Harris camo caps are selling at an unparalleled level.

Harris is on a pace, he said, that way out-distances the campaigns of Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Al Gore combined, and in a much shorter timespan.

He said Hillary Clinton sold 15,000 caps, Gore 100,000 and Biden just 100,000 as well while 300,000 Harris caps have already been bought.

Cahn noted the shop made a million units for Barack Obama, but that was spanning the many years through the course of his campaign and re-election until the end of his presidency.

The camouflage hats were first debuted in early August shortly after Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz made his first speech since being nominated as Harris' running mate.

After the speech he posted on X a picture of himself smiling and wearing the new design with the caption 'capping off the night.'

Featuring a forest camo design and bright, highlighter orange lettering the hat immediately flew off the shelves.

The 3,000 camo hats first offered after Walz's August post sold out within 30 minutes from the official Harris campaign store, Teen Vogue reported.

The hats have been such a hit that roughly 50 to 60 percent of Unionwear's orders for Harris merchandise have been the camo and orange design.

And that specific outdoorsman design has blown up among trendy millennials and Gen Z voters.

Celebrities have been spotted donning the cap, including pop star and American Idol judge Katy Perry, singer Billie Eilish and Star Wars icon Mark Hamill.

The camouflage look has been a popular one among wanna-be-tough Brooklyn residents and other affluent coastal neighborhoods that are nowhere near hunting grounds.

And then there's Trump.

Despite supplying caps to the Trump campaign in 2015, Unionwear was not chosen as its official merchandiser - that would be Louisiana-based ACE Specialties.

ACE's factory has also been capping off a busy election cycle.

Just this year the Trump campaign has shipped nearly 1.3 million hats, DailyMail.com has learned.

Since January 1, 2023, the campaign has shipped nearly 2.1 million official campaign hats to MAGA customers.

'President Trump is the most iconic presidential candidate in history—from historic rallies filling Madison Square Garden to record-breaking podcasts with giants like Joe Rogan and Elon Musk and over 2 million MAGA hats have been distributed to supporters this cycle,' RNC spokesperson Taylor Rogers said of the sales.

'President Trump's message of hope and his America First agenda resonates with hardworking Americans and their families. The momentum is on our side because voters know Kamala broke our country, and President Trump is the only one who can.'

Despite not being the official MAGA hat supplier, Unionwear regularly gets orders for what Cahn calls 'knock offs.'

He claims his and other unofficial Trump-supporting caps have completely taken over the MAGA market.

'The Make America Great Again hat is a completely different animal than the Harris hat, and that's because that market has been completely taken over by people selling knockoffs,' he said.

Still, Cahn said, in an average election year his shop will get roughly 25,000 MAGA hat orders.

'I would doubt, if you went to a Trump rally that you would find more than a handful of hats that people actually bought from the campaign.

'If you look at pictures of a Trump rally, you'll see that every hat is different,' Cahn explained. 'That's not the way that mass manufacturing works.'

Overall, Unionwear sells far more caps to Democrats than Republicans, with 90 percent of their orders coming from the left and just 10 percent from the right.

Made in America merchandise, however, comes with a premium cost.

Cahn said that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and China's entry to the World Trade Organization (WTO) devastated U.S. manufacturers.

'After NAFTA and then WTO, it just became much cheaper to import products,' he told DailyMail.com. 'And hats are a very high labor cost item relative to the value of everything else.'

'So that was one of the first items to move completely overseas,' the business owner added. 'It made it much easier to import products from China, and that really killed the domestic headwear business.'

But consumers are increasingly valuing the patriotic moniker, and 'Made in America' is making a comeback.

'There is definitely a growing interest in making USA products, much more so now than, say, 10 years ago, and it's only going to grow over the next few years,' he said.

Cahn hopes that the U.S. hosting the World Cup in 2026 will boost American-made product sales.

Two years later in 2028 the Olympics will be hosted in Los Angeles, another potential boon for business.

When pressed on which candidate he supports, Cahn gave a politically adept answer.

'I think that both candidates have a plan to help domestic manufacturing.

'I think that the Harris plan will help domestic manufacturing workers more, while the Trump plan will help domestic manufacturing businesses more,' he said. 'Both of them will affect us positively.'

Though, he added, 'We're waiting to see what happens on November 5 before making our plans for next year.'

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