WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump says Saturday’s fireworks show in Washington celebrating America’s 250th birthday will be the biggest in history.
What’s unclear is how much the record-setting display will cost, where the fireworks were manufactured and whether the president’s tariffs are adding to the final tab.
Rocco Vitale, president of the Pennsylvania-based fireworks company Pyrotecnico that is running Saturday’s show, told Spectrum News on Friday that 850,000 fireworks will be launched from more than 50 positions in the nation’s capital, including off of eight barges in the Potomac River. He said a 75-person team has spent six months preparing for the event.
“To do this, and do this scale, has obviously been something that really no one's ever done before,” Vitale said.
The current record for the world’s biggest fireworks show, according to Guinness World Records, took place in the Philippines in 2016 and consisted of 810,904 fireworks.
Saturday's fireworks will play out in record-breaking heat. Weather forecasts project highs approaching triple digits during the day and humid conditions for the evening.
Vitale said, despite the extreme weather, “The heat is not a factor in what we do.”
How much will this show cost?
On Friday, Vitale declined to share the cost of the display. He also said he did not know how many other companies competed for the project.
Steve Houser, the president of Red Rhino Fireworks in Joplin, Missouri, and a former president of the National Fireworks Association, said he did not know the specifics of Pyrotecnico’s contract, but he estimated the July 4th show will cost at least $6 to $7 million.
“I would say that this show is multimillion-dollars without question,” he told Spectrum News. “That's just for the pyrotechnics. Then you're going to have to think about the expense of the labor, the movement, the transportation and all those kinds of things.”
Spectrum News sent a list of questions about cost and sourcing to the White House, the Interior Department and the National Park Service but has so far received no responses.
Tariffs' impact on the fireworks
Because the majority of fireworks sold in the U.S. are sourced from China, the tariffs Trump applied on Chinese imports have driven up the cost of fireworks shows across the nation – and likely added to the bill for the big show in Washington.
“We saw this as a huge problem going into this season,” said Stacy Schneitter Blake, the current president of the National Fireworks Association and co-owner of Schneitter Fireworks & Importing Co. in Missouri.
“The biggest challenge with the tariffs was the uncertainty. You know, as the rate had changed, our industry, as it is a 12-to-18-month supply chain to get it here, there were a lot of our members and in our industry that were very nervous about this. The uncertainty was the hard part,” she said in an interview on Friday.
Houser, whose company imports and distributes fireworks, said the back-and-forth over tariff rates has been tricky to handle.
“We couldn't budget or plan when the tariff was 10% one day, 15% the next, 20% the following week,” he said. “You know, businesses can't operate in that kind of environment, and you know, while our industry – nobody wants to have tariffs, we realize that, you know, for America overall, I think we see the plan, I think we understand it. We're willing to contribute our part to it, but you know, just as long as the numbers are manageable.”
Houser said that tariffs on Chinese fireworks are currently “at basically 10% over where we normally have always been, so we're paying about 15.5% percent, roughly, outside some other special fees, like brokerage and stuff like that.”
Vitale said Friday that Pyrotecnico sourced fireworks from around the world for Saturday’s show.
“We really scoured the globe looking for the best material to put in this show, and there's product from here in the United States, there's product from Italy, there's product from Spain, there's product from Asia,” he said. “So yeah, it's a big mix of variety.”
Vitale said his company consistently works to inventory a lot of fireworks to avoid feeling a pinch in trade flare-ups.
“After we were awarded the show, we did go out and into the marketplace and make sure that we're like, okay, let's go get the special stuff from here, special stuff from there, and that was a fun process,” he said.
Schneitter Blake said the U.S. fireworks industry has gone to great lengths to keep fireworks flowing to U.S. customers.
“The industry did become incredibly innovative. Companies redesigned packaging to reduce freight cost. They improved efficiencies throughout the supply chain,” she said. “In many cases, they just lowered their margins, so American families could afford celebrating together for this July 4th.”
Seven Days, a weekly newspaper in Vermont, reported last month that “Fourth of July fireworks displays have become so costly in Vermont that some towns are seeking stopgap donations from residents to help fund shows for the nation’s 250th birthday — or have canceled them altogether.”
According to the paper, the town of Hinesburg was set to order fireworks through Pyrotecnico (the company overseeing the National Mall’s display) but ended up canceling because of a higher minimum fee.
“Matt Shea, Pyrotecnico’s Northeast regional manager, said it had to raise prices to offset the higher import costs,” the paper reported.
In Missouri, St. Louis Magazine reported in June that “Ferguson and St. Louis County canceled this year’s July 4 fireworks displays, while Kirkwood has been feverishly raising money to pay for its festivities.”
Houser said, in an effort to allow celebrations for America’s 250th to proceed, communities and fireworks companies have been collaborating.
“We in the industry have, you know, changed our margin projection, because we want to see it happen,” he said. “But you know, towns have ponied up a little bit more, and a lot of it's come from private enterprise, you know, making donations because they're like, ‘We want this to happen, we want to be part of this too.’”
Congressional criticism
In Congress, Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee released a report on Thursday about “How Trump Hijacked America's 250th Birthday to Enrich Himself, Sell Access, and Harvest Americans' Data.”
It criticizes the Trump Administration’s lack of transparency over contracts, funding, and sourcing for the events happening to mark America’s 250th.
The committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Jared Huffman of California, said in a statement, “As our country prepared to celebrate a milestone that belongs to every American, Trump and his operatives launched a hostile takeover of the bipartisan commission established by Congress to lead the celebration.”
Republican lawmakers have defended President Trump’s handling of America’s birthday.
The unprecedented scale of Saturday’s show
While the price tag and exact sourcing of Saturday’s show remain a mystery, Houser and Schneitter Blake said the size of Saturday’s record-setting display will be a big moment for their industry.
“I think it's going to be something people are going to remember forever. They'll probably never see something quite like it again,” Houser said.
Schneitter Blake added that the goal of marking the country’s 250th birthday has motivated folks in the fireworks business to do whatever’s necessary to pull it off.
“This has brought our industry together, company to company, helping each other out, and I'm sure that's also been a part of this show in Washington, DC,” she said.
An 850,000-firework show is “a massive computer undertaking,” Houser said. He said he wished he was in Washington to witness it because “this thing's going to be mind-blowing.”