The biggest months for fireworks are here. Soon, the booming explosives will bathe Columbus and its orbiting suburbs in rays of color. Dogs will howl. Kids will delight. Fingers will suffer.
For the upcoming Independence Day, the Midwest’s largest fireworks show, Red, White & BOOM!, is not the only act in town. Bexley, Clintonville, Dublin, Gahanna, Grove City, Groveport, New Albany, Pickerington, Reynoldsburg, Westerville, Worthington and Upper Arlington will all have community fireworks displays of their own.
That’s just the official fireworks shows. Ohioans will be free to set off fireworks of their own for the holiday, as long as their municipalities haven’t banned them.
With so many fireworks going off, you might wonder if Ohio is the most pyrotechnically obsessed state in the country. Where does the Buckeye State rank when it comes to importing fireworks?
How do Ohio’s firework imports rank?
A May study from ValuePenguin, a subsidiary of loan marketplace company LendingTree, calculated the value of each state’s imported fireworks in 2024 and divided that number by the state’s population, resulting in an estimated value per person.
Ohioans spent over $39 million on fireworks in 2024, or approximately $3.37 per person on fireworks. That puts the state ninth in the study’s rankings, behind South Carolina, which ranks eighth with $3.71 spent per person.
Missouri came in first place, spending over $85 million, or $13.84 per person. In second place was Kansas, with over $25 million spent or $8.79 per person.
When considering the value of the imported fireworks alone, Ohio spent the second-most on pyrotechnics in 2024, falling short only of Missouri.
Massachusetts, which has the strictest fireworks rules in the country, spent the least on imported fireworks at only $44,449, or around one cent per person.
Here is the full top ten list.
Ohio Fireworks, one of the few fireworks vendors in southeast Ohio, imports around 2,000 cases of fireworks per year, the company’s main supervisor Jessica Stephens said. They then sell them Ohio consumers, who come by the hundreds as Independence Day approaches.
“Everybody seems to wait to the last minute,” she said.
Will tariffs on imports impact this summer’s fireworks?
The city of Powell’s fireworks show and Columbus’ Red, White & BOOM! celebration will be unaffected by this year’s tariffs. But 2026’s celebration, which is also the country’s 250th birthday, is more uncertain.
Most fireworks companies, including nationwide fireworks company Pyrotecnico, buy their fireworks months or up to a year in advance, meaning they may have been able to dodge tariff cost spikes, Pyrotecnico’s regional director, Chris Mele, previously told the Dispatch.
Ohio Fireworks was not one of these companies that escaped unscathed, according to Stephens.
“We definitely got hit with the tariffs pretty hard. So hopefully going forward with next year, we don’t have the same problem,” she said.
The United States’ current tariff rate on China, the source of over 96% of America’s fireworks, is at 30% with an additional 25% on specific products, CNBC reported. Tariffs at that level would force American fireworks importers to pay an additional $135 million for their supply over the year, according to the study.
Breaking and Trending News Reporter Nathan Hart can be reached at NHart@dispatch.com and at @NathanRHart on X and at nathanhart.dispatch.com on Bluesky.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio loves fireworks: State ranks in top 10 for imports, study shows
Reporting by Nathan Hart, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
