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A woman walks past a polling station during early voting for the US midterm elections on October 28, 2022 in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Brendan Smialowski | AFP | Getty Images

In the 2020 election cycle, the Democratic Governors Association spent roughly 75% of its advertising budget on Facebook, taking advantage of the app’s ubiquity and its ability to deliver hyper-targeted ads to potential voters.

For the 2022 midterm elections, which include many key gubernatorial contests and will determine control of the House and Senate, the group has steered much of its money elsewhere. Ahead of Election Day on Nov. 8, just half of its spending is taking place on Facebook.

“I think the throughline that you’ll see overall is Facebook has become a much less effective platform over the past two years,” said Laura Carlson, digital director of the Democratic Governors Association.

Facebook has been mired in political controversy for over a half decade, since the platform was abused during the 2016 election campaign by foreign actors spreading disinformation. The 2020 season wasn’t much better, and ultimately led to Facebook’s banning of ex-President Donald Trump from the app following the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection on the U.S. Capitol.

But none of that explains why political campaigns have been turning away from Facebook. Rather, Carlson said the changes that Apple made to iOS last year, which limited the targeting capabilities for advertisers, have made Facebook a less valuable tool for disseminating political messages to the correct audience.

“I think the real culprit that you see is the privacy changes on the iPhone,” Carlson said. She said her organization is pushing the other half of its $10 million budget to areas like traditional email and text campaigns as well as newer platforms like connected TV and streaming services.

The retreat from Facebook by political advertisers mirrors the broader challenge the company faces now that brands can no longer rely on key pieces of user data to promote their products and services. Facebook parent Meta just reported its second straight quarter of declining revenue and said another decline is coming in the fourth quarter. The stock has lost 72% of its value year to date and closed on Monday at its lowest point since early 2016.

Political ads have always been a small part of Facebook’s overall business. An analysis by CNBC ahead of the 2020 election, based on data from Facebook’s ad library and the Center for Responsive Politics, showed that at least 3% of the company’s estimated revenue for the third quarter of that year was from politicians and campaigns.

Protestors demonstrate with an art installation of body bags during a protest against Facebook and what they claim is disinformation regarding coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on the social media giant’s platform, outside the front doors of Facebook headquarters in Washington, U.S., July 28, 2021.

Jim Bourg | Reuters

For many campaigns, Facebook had become the go-to spot for ads because of the reach and the ability to both distribute messages and raise money from wide swaths of people. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., berated fellow Democratic nominees after the 2020 election, telling The New York Times that the party lost seats in Congress because candidates didn’t spend enough on Facebook.

The math has since changed.

Annie Levene, a partner for the democratic advertising firm Rising Tide Interactive, said her organization has slashed its Facebook budget for the midterms compared to the last cycle from around 10% to between 3% and 5%.

Levene said Facebook is still useful for running relatively simple fundraising ads where it’s easy to track return on investment. But for the more complicated persuasion ads, Levene said Facebook doesn’t offer a lot of value since the iOS change.

“We have to do what is best for our clients,” Levene said. She said she’ll use Facebook for raising money, because “it would be sort of malpractice to say here’s a channel that we could be really successful for you on fundraising, but we’re not going to do it.”

Ethan Eilon, the president of digital marketing firm IMGE, which works with Republicans, said the Apple iOS update is a major reason his group is “investing considerably less in Facebook advertising compared to other platforms and channels than we were last cycle.”

However, it’s not just about Apple. Advertisers told CNBC that they also learned an important lesson from a turbulent 2020 cycle, when platforms including Facebook banned new political ads from running the week before the election. Facebook said its ban, announced about two months before Election Day, was intended to “connect people with authoritative information” and to “fight misinformation.”

‘A big shake-up’

Grace Briscoe, senior vice president at marketing technology firm Basis Technologies, said the short notice was particularly concerning in tight races like the Georgia Senate runoff elections in January 2021.

“That was a big shake-up, I think, in a lot of our clients’ minds of being overly reliant on a platform that might sort of pull the rug out from under you,” Briscoe said. “That’s not helping with that sort of trust level between the political advertisers for sure and the platforms.”

Basis, whose technology is used by political campaigns, saw a 1,500% increase in spending on connected TV devices in the first half of 2022 compared to the first half of 2020, Briscoe said. That’s especially significant considering there’s no presidential contest this cycle, which typically means lower turnout.

Two years ago, streaming platforms made up a small share of overall political ad spending, though many experts predicted it would grow over time. The pandemic accelerated that trend since so many consumers turned to streaming platforms while stuck at home, and content for cord-cutters proliferated.

Total ad spending on connected TV platforms climbed 57% in 2021 to $15.2 billion and is expected to jump another 39% this year to $21.2 billion, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Ad tracking firm AdImpact projected that of the $9.7 billion spent on political ads this cycle, $1.4 billion would go to connected TVs.

John Padua, vice president of media buying at Trilogy Interactive, said some of his agency’s spending that had been on Facebook has been redirected toward streaming.

That last week of ads before an election is so important, Padua said, because you’re “trying to find those last five, 10 thousand votes that could make the biggest difference in a congressional election, particularly in a potential wave year.”

He added that you get a last chance to respond to a “bit of polling that tells us that we need to shore up a certain demographic or people who have certain issues.”

Padua, whose agency has worked for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga, said Trilogy is still going to do last-minute ads, but “we’re going to just put that message out on different platforms, and Facebook is just going to be cut out of buying.”

Sen. Warnock holds slight lead in tight Georgia race

Facebook parent company Meta declined to comment for this story.

Advertisers stressed that spending on Facebook and other social platforms is still valuable and an important part of the overall mix. Political groups and lawmakers spent around $84 million on Facebook ads during the third quarter of 2022, with around $58 million spent on direct response advertising, according to Ad Impact.

But every source who spoke on the topic to CNBC said Facebook is not as effective as in past cycles, leading many to search out other options like streaming.

Smart TVs provide a medium that’s already quite familiar to political advertisers: television. Advertisers said that TV ads tend to be more about persuasion and telling a story than ads on Facebook.

Interest in connected TV and over-the-top platforms has “skyrocketed” since the 2020 presidential elections, said Joe Marino, the head of client success at Madhive, which helps companies run and manage ad campaigns across streaming services. “Going into this cycle now, streaming is literally a part of every single buy, and it’s a big part of it,” Marino said.

He added that the platforms have matured dramatically and have made it much simpler to run campaigns than in the past, approaching Facebook-like ease.

“The beauty in digital is that budgets can be fluid,” Marino said, contrasting streaming with traditional linear television. “You can cancel them on a dime and move them on a dime.”

Briscoe said the targeting has gotten much better as well. Streaming services now have the type of location and behavioral click-through data that advertisers highly value in efficiently getting their message out.

“It is actually much easier for campaigns to scale connected TV, even down to like a state legislative district, which was not possible two years ago even,” Briscoe said. “Two years ago, we were excited if a connected-TV campaign could scale in a congressional district. Now, you’re getting much more narrow.”

Roku CEO Anthony Wood said after his company’s second-quarter earnings report in July that “political is a good vertical for us, a scenario that’s growing” even though was “not a huge business” at the time. Roku and Amazon lead the U.S. market for streaming devices.

‘Completely performative’

Just as new ad avenues are popping up, a persisting issue for Facebook, advertisers say, is that the restrictions the company put on political campaigns in 2020 haven’t been effective at slowing the spread of misinformation.

Hate speech and conspiracy theories have continued to run rampant on Facebook, despite community guidelines that ban such behavior. But much of that content comes from people who post it for free, rather than paid placements.

“I don’t think the problem on these platforms, whether it’s Facebook or Google, was ever advertising,” said Patrick McHugh, a partner at Gambit Strategies, which focuses on online mobilization for Democratic causes and candidates. He called Facebook’s policies “completely performative.”

“They’ve utilized political advertising as sort of the facade that they then use to put restrictions on because they like to claim that fixes the problem,” McHugh added. “The truth is, if they really did fix the actual problem, that is rooted in their algorithm that will cost them money.”

It doesn’t help that Facebook has turned into a punching bag on Capitol Hill by many of the same politicians who relied on the site for prior campaigning.

Facebook co-founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill April 11, 2018 in Washington, DC.

Yasin Ozturk | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

Facebook executives have been called to Washington numerous times in recent years to testify about the legal liability that protects social media, antitrust issues facing Big Tech and, most recently, the whistleblower revelations last year about the company’s unwillingness to make changes despite knowing some of the content it hosts is harming users.

Marino said that during past crises advertisers have shifted budgets away from Facebook, only to come back when the temperature cooled. That occurred after the Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018, which was explosive at the time and eventually led the company to settle a lawsuit. Facebook’s business momentum quickly recovered, however.

“If you see any press about Facebook that’s negative, generally budgets flow out of that really quickly into other channels,” Marino said. “They’ll flow back once people pretend to forget.”

This cycle has a distinctly different tone, though. So many changes have taken place with Facebook’s business and the broad ad ecosystem that advertisers are suggesting the latest shift away to other platforms seems more permanent.

Republican political consultant Luke Thompson said that while Facebook is still “essential for fundraising and volunteer organizing,” it no longer has the tools necessary to attract broader campaigns.

Apple’s crackdown has indeed diminished Facebook’s position in political advertising. But Thompson said it started with the “reputational damage from the Cambridge Analytica scandal,” which he described as a cynical effort by lawmakers to try and convince the public of election interference.

“Since then, the platform has become much less open, more rigid, and less willing to share outcome data,” Thompson said.

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Here’s where Apple makes its products — and how Trump’s tariffs could have an impact

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Here's where Apple makes its products — and how Trump's tariffs could have an impact

Apple’s iPhone 16 at an Apple Store on Regent Street in London on Sept. 20, 2024.

Rasid Necati Aslim | Anadolu | Getty Images

Apple has made moves to diversify its supply chain beyond China to places like India and Vietnam, but tariffs announced by the White House are set to hit those countries too.

U.S. President Donald Trump laid out “reciprocal tariff” rates on more than 180 countries on Wednesday.

China will face a 34% tariff, but with the existing 20% rate, that brings the true tariff rate on Beijing under this Trump term to 54%, CNBC reported. India faces a 26% tariff, while Vietnam’s rate is 46%.

Apple was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.

Here’s a breakdown on Apple’s supply chain footprint that could be affected by tariffs.

China

The majority of Apple’s iPhones are still assembled in China by partner Foxconn.

China accounts for around 80% of Apple’s production capacity, according to estimates from Evercore ISI in a note last month.

Around 90% of iPhones are assembled in China, Evercore ISI said.

While the number of manufacturing sites in China dropped between Apple’s 2017 and 2020 fiscal year, it has since rebounded, Bernstein said in a note last month. Chinese suppliers account for around 40% of Apple’s total, Bernstein said.

Evercore ISI estimates that 55% of Apple’s Mac products and 80% of iPads are assembled in China.

India

Apple is targeting around 25% of all iPhones globally to be made in India, a government minister said in 2023.

India could reach about 15%-20% of overall iPhone production by the end of 2025, Bernstein analysts estimate. Evercore ISI said around 10% to 15% of iPhones are currently assembled in India.

Vietnam

Vietnam has emerged in the past few years as a popular manufacturing hub for consumer electronics. Apple has increased its production in Vietnam.

Around 20% of iPad production and 90% of Apple’s wearable product assembly like the Apple Watch takes place in Vietnam, according to Evercore ISI.

Other key countries

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Xiaomi delivers record cars in March as winners emerge in China’s EV race

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Xiaomi delivers record cars in March as winners emerge in China's EV race

A Xiaomi store in Shanghai, China, on March 16, 2025.

Qilai Shen/Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Chinese electric carmakers Xiaomi, Xpeng and Leapmotor each delivered nearly 30,000 or more cars in March, roughly twice several of their fellow startup competitors.

It’s a sign of how some automakers are pulling ahead, while BYD remains the market leader by far.

Xiaomi delivered a record number of electric vehicles in March, exceeding 29,000 units, the company announced on social media. That topped its prior run of delivering more than 20,000 vehicles in each of the past five months.

The SU7, Xiaomi’s flagship model, was involved in a crash on a highway on Tuesday that left three dead. The automaker on Tuesday afternoon released a statement on Chinese social media that the vehicle was in navigation on autopilot mode before the accident.

Based on preliminary information, the road was obstructed because of construction. The driver took control of the car but collided with construction infrastructure. Xiaomi added in the release that investigations were underway.

That came two weeks after the automaker announced on March 18 its goal to deliver 350,000 vehicles this year. There are also talks of the automaker expanding its second EV factory in Beijing to meet demand, Bloomberg reported on March 18. Xiaomi did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Its competitor Xpeng in March delivered 33,205 vehicles, the fifth consecutive month it has delivered over 30,000 units per month and reflecting a 268% surge in deliveries from the same month last year. March is also the fifth consecutive month the company has delivered over 15,000 units of the Mona M03.

Leapmotor delivered 37,095 vehicles, reflecting a 154% year-over-year growth. The Stellantis-owned automaker last month launched U.K. sales of two electric vehicle models, the T03 and the C10.

Li Auto delivered 36,674 vehicles in March, a 26.5% year-over-year increase, but fewer than every month in the second half of 2024. The company’s cars had gained early traction with Chinese consumers since most come with a fuel tank for charging the vehicle’s battery, reducing anxiety about driving range.

Tesla takes two of three top spots in China's most popular EV list

BYD sold 371,419 passenger vehicles in March, reflecting a year-over-year growth of 57.9%. Its overseas sales volume also hit a record high of 72,723 units in March.

In the same month, the automaker unveiled its “Super e-Platform” technology, which boasts 400 kilometers (roughly 249 miles) of range with five minutes of charging. The company in February also announced that it was integrating DeepSeek artificial intelligence to develop “DiPilot,” its advanced driver-assistance system.

Across the board, major companies across China’s electric car industry reported deliveries rose last month, indicating a pick-up in demand from the seasonally soft first two months of the year.

U.S. automaker Tesla sold 78,828 electric vehicles in China in March, marking a 11.5% year-over-year decline in growth.

Other Chinese carmakers saw growth in deliveries but some still struggled to break through the 20,000-unit mark.  

Nio delivered 15,039 vehicles, a 26.7% year-over-year growth, but well below the number of cars delivered in the months of May to December last year. Nio-owned Onvo, which markets its electric vehicles as family-oriented, in March recorded 15,039 units in deliveries.

Geely-owned Zeekr delivered 15,422 vehicles in March, increasing by 18.5% year over year. The company last month announced its rollout of free advanced driver-assistance technology to local customers in a bid to compete in the market.

Aito, as of April 2, has not published its delivery numbers for March. The automaker, which uses Huawei tech in its vehicles, on social media had reported monthly deliveries of 34,987 and 21,517 in January and February, respectively.

Quarterly performance

On a first-quarter basis, BYD remained in the lead with 986,098 vehicles sold. The automaker, which overtook Tesla in annual sales last year, surpassed the U.S. EV giant in battery electric vehicles sales this quarter.

Tesla sold 172,754 vehicles in China in the first quarter this year, according to monthly delivery numbers published by the China Passenger Car Association.

Xpeng also reported strong growth, with a total of 94,008 vehicles delivered in the quarter ending in March, reflecting a 331% year-over-year growth.

Leapmotor saw quarterly deliveries more than double to 87,552 units from 33,410 units the same period in 2024, according to publicly available numbers the company published.

However, Li Auto and Nio reported weaker growth than their competitors in the first quarter of the year.

Nio saw 42,094 vehicles delivered in the three months ended March 2025, an increase of 40.1% year over year. Li Auto saw a slower year-over-year growth of 15.5%, with a total of 92,864 vehicles delivered.

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De minimis trade loophole that boosted Chinese online retailers to end May 2

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De minimis trade loophole that boosted Chinese online retailers to end May 2

A driver for an independent contractor to FedEx delivers packages on Cyber Monday in New York, US, on Monday, Nov. 27, 2023.

Stephanie Keith | Bloomberg | Getty Images

President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order shutting the de minimis trade loophole, effective May 2.

Trump in February abruptly ended the de minimis trade exemption, which allows shipments worth less than $800 to enter the U.S. duty-free. The order overwhelmed U.S. Customs and Border Protection employees and caused the U.S. Postal Service to temporarily halt packages from China and Hong Kong. Within days of its announcement, Trump reversed course and delayed the cancellation of the provision.

Wednesday’s announcement, which came alongside a set of sweeping new tariffs, gives customs officials, retailers and logistics companies more time to prepare. Goods that qualify under the de minimis exemption will be subject to a duty of either 30% of their value, or $25 per item. That rate will increase to $50 per item on June 1, the White House said.

Use of the de minimis provision has exploded in recent years as shoppers flock to Chinese e-commerce companies Temu and Shein, which offer ultra-low cost apparel, electronics and other items. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection has said it processed more than 1.3 billion de minimis shipments in 2024, up from over 1 billion shipments in 2023.

Critics of the provision say it provides an unfair advantage to Chinese e-commerce companies and creates an influx of packages that are “subject to minimal documentation and inspection,” raising concerns around counterfeit and unsafe goods.

The Trump administration has sought to close the loophole over concerns that it facilitates shipments of fentanyl and other illicit substances on the claims that the packages are less likely to be inspected by customs agents.

Temu and Shein have taken steps to grow their operations in the U.S. as the de minimis loophole has come under greater scrutiny. After onboarding sellers with inventory in U.S. warehouses, Temu recently began steering shoppers to those items on its website, allowing it to speed up deliveries. Shein opened distribution centers in states including Illinois and California in 2022, and a supply chain hub in Seattle last year.

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