Johannes Eisele / AFP / Getty
Competition from Chinese fake trees is driving U.S. growers of real Christmas trees out of business and causing the prices for the shrinking supply of real trees to spike higher.
There are approximately 350 million real Christmas trees currently growing on farms across the United States to service annual demand for about 25-30 million , according to the National Christmas Tree Association. NCTA projects the average customer will spend about $82.20 for a real tree this year. That is up just 10 percent from last year, but the price for a real tree has spiked by 210 percent from $38.50 in 2014.
The dominant West Coast…