25% tariff increase on brass instruments

[cthuba]

There will be a 25% tariff increase in brass instruments and accessories (mouthpieces, valves etc) starting August 27th

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/20 ... -UgNbTDhkI

Here is a link for public comment:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documen ... inum-steel

[cthuba]

I’m having a hell of a time trying to find the docket on regulations.gov to comment. Letting ya’ll know ahead of time that this is difficult.

At least for a dumb 36 year old such as myself.

[gocsick]

Interesting bit from the article

The company announced in January that it planned to transfer its production of brass winds such as tubas, sousaphones and some French horns to China, eliminating roughly 150 jobs.

Conn Selmer said the changes were necessary to improve its competitiveness and respond to market demand, while union workers accused the company of abandoning American manufacturing. The company owns several of the country’s most recognizable instrument brands, including Bach, Conn, King, Holton and Selmer.

Conn Selmer is owned by John Paulson, a hedge fund manager and Trump campaign adviser, who authored an article in The Wall Street Journal arguing in favor of Mr. Trump’s tariffs.

Conn Selmer did not respond to a request for comment for this report.

[shovelingtom]

The article about this on classic.fm closes with “So, apparently, the tuba is now a matter of national defense.”

[bloke]

I'll be glad to keep the ones you've got in working order.
For now, I'm not charging the 25% surcharge.

In the meantime, I might be selling off a couple of my very best instruments fairly soon...
... no tariff
(How many of you looking for stuff as nice as mine were shopping Conn-Selmer anyway?)

bloke "owner of the world's finest six quarter B flat tuba as well as the world's finest F cimbasso"

[cthuba]

I'll be glad to keep the ones you've got in working order.
For now, I'm not charging the 25% surcharge.

In the meantime, I might be selling off a couple of my very best instruments fairly soon...
... no tariff
(How many of you looking for stuff as nice as mine were shopping Conn-Selmer anyway?)

bloke "owner of the world's finest six quarter B flat tuba as well as the world's finest F cimbasso"

This reminds me of the time I heard an ad on the radio for flood insurance after Helene hit. Certainly not the same, but it made me remember it.

[the elephant]

Hello… I read the reg as regarding Chinese-made brasses, like you-know-who, and maybe Yamaha student and marching brass. Others, too.

No idea why woodwinds are not on the Nuclear Watch List.

[LargeTuba]

This is just 3d chess

[JCTuba67]

A lot of the posts going around about this wildly misleading.

August 27 is NOT the date some new 25% “tuba tariff” automatically goes into effect. August 27 is the deadline for public comments on the proposal. That is a huge difference.

The federal notice literally says brass instruments and parts are being proposed for inclusion under Section 232. It does not say the tariff becomes effective on August 27, and it does not give August 27 as an implementation date.

So when people post stuff like “Trump’s 25% tariff on trumpets and tubas starts August 27 because they’re a national security threat,” they are skipping half the story and turning a proposal into a finalized policy.

And no, tubas and trumpets themselves are not suddenly some serious national security threat. They got pulled into a much broader tariff process because they contain copper, steel and aluminum.

Could the tariff eventually happen? Yes. But as of right now, it is still a proposal being reviewed. Anyone saying it definitely starts on August 27 either misunderstood the Federal Register notice or didn’t actually read it.

[cthuba]

A lot of the posts going around about this wildly misleading.

August 27 is NOT the date some new 25% “tuba tariff” automatically goes into effect. August 27 is the deadline for public comments on the proposal. That is a huge difference.

The federal notice literally says brass instruments and parts are being proposed for inclusion under Section 232. It does not say the tariff becomes effective on August 27, and it does not give August 27 as an implementation date.

So when people post stuff like “Trump’s 25% tariff on trumpets and tubas starts August 27 because they’re a national security threat,” they are skipping half the story and turning a proposal into a finalized policy.

And no, tubas and trumpets themselves are not suddenly some serious national security threat. They got pulled into a much broader tariff process because they contain copper, steel and aluminum.

Could the tariff eventually happen? Yes. But as of right now, it is still a proposal being reviewed. Anyone saying it definitely starts on August 27 either misunderstood the Federal Register notice or didn’t actually read it.

Thanks for the clarification.

[Matt Good]

My wife actually started this.

[BuddyRogersMusic]

Follow the link to comment and click on "Comment"

https://www.regulations.gov/document/BIS-2026-0331-0001

[bloke]

I'm ALREADY paying a hell of a tariff on Chinese musical instruments. Did anyone think that the fact that I used to sell Doodly-Doo Brand compensating euphoniums for 1300 bucks and NOW I sell Doodly-Doo compensating euphoniums for 1900 bucks... Did anyone here think that I was just jacking in the price up to make more profit? (...yet I still have the lowest prices on those models in the entire United States)
By the way, a whole bunch of that price increase (much more than the fat tariff that I'm paying) is the devaluation of the dollar by the Fed when they printed who knows many tens of trillions of dollars out of thin air that had nothing to do with any delivered goods or services (the Fed's excuse for destroying the value of our currency being the top down orchestrated economic shutdown)... and we all know that the overwhelming majority of the resultant hyperinflation happened before 2021 (though now we're continuing to see even more inflation, because we have ALWAYS had inflation, but it hurts particularly now that everything VERY SUDDENLY doubled in price BEFORE 2021, and almost none of our wages increased.
... and it's obvious who is posting about this on social media.
Also. (as far as how different groups of people view things) there's not a single thing today - nothing - that isn't political
Every-every-everything is political now, and depending on someone's political points of view - certain set of statements are believed to be fact (regardless of whether they actually are).

Finally, all the same people who are moaning about this crap are all the same ones who - 15 years or so ago - were doing backflips about how we could all get cheap tubas and cheap euphoniums and cheap saxophones and cheap guitars and cheap everything. Some of the rest of us pointed out that there would eventually be none of that stuff made in the western world anymore (whereby our money would be so inflated - due to our economies in the western world having become false economies), and then at that time the price of the stuff made in Asia would be as expensive as the stuff made in the west previously was. The response to those sorts of statements: "hahahahahsha... That's just stupid conservative-think" (a bunch of keynesians all ignorantly laughing in unison).

Hey... I sell Chinese instruments.
' you know why?
because that's where all the instruments are now made.
Where do you think Yamaha has their instruments made?
What's the minimum amount of labor that has to go into an instrument for it to be marked that it was manufactured in a certain country? ... maybe...(??) wrapping it in plastic and putting it in a case...?? When all of the Japanese trumpets suddenly became non-parts-interchangeable with the previous ones, and when the threads on the big brass suddenly became coarse - instead of fine - and other changes occurred (with a bunch of Roman numeral II versions suddenly being introduced), what do you suspect also happened simultaneously?

MAIN POINT:
a bunch of hand-wringing and mockery of a possible heavy tariff on some stuff that some of us might be interested in buying, yet no acknowledgment that - between 2020 and 2024 - the prices of most everything doubled.

[tofu]

Not to worry - all will be fine once “the means of production are seized”.

[bisontuba]

From repair tech Brian Stephenson:

..."Earlier today I responded to a post about American instrument Manufacturing, the affect of tariffs and how it might impact band programs in the US. Here is my response, as requested, as it's own standalone post. I've edited and expanded on some things and did some fact-checking on my own claims to be as accurate as possible. I hope a perspective from my world can be insightful and useful to some of you. Thank you for reading my ramblings

Hi. Band Parent, Instrument Repair Tech, and Owner of a Family Local Band Music Store. I feel like I can give an angle and perspective that answers a lot of questions about the current state of musical instrument making in the US and can give an idea of direct impact with a fairly expert voice.

-I'd buy and sell American Made instruments if I could. The fact is that there are less than a dozen actual instrument factories making brass and woodwind instruments in the US any more. Of these, there are maybe one or two that are making any kind of student or beginner line of instruments. The majority of US made instruments are small custom shops.

Notable Makers include: Conn-Selmer, Getzen, Shires, Schilke, BAC, Powell, Haynes, Fox, and Burkart.

-So why don't I buy from them? A couple of reasons. Firstly, in our business there are a lot of brands that are location protected by companies that have been there forever or by large Hedge-Fund owned music stores. I, for example, can't Sell any Conn-Selmer instruments, I've tried. I'm too close to another person selling them, and they are not taking new dealers. Even if they were taking a new dealer, they aren't interested in working with smaller stores like mine. The initial buy-in is enormous.

-Also, those brands can't provide the amount needed even if we wanted to only sell them. Many of the American Companies lost a lot of personnel during COVID and never were able to get them back, seeing entire student lines of instruments discontinued because of lack of skilled labor. The Getzen company in Wisconsin made one of the best student lines of trumpets and trombones in history and ceased manufacturing a couple years ago. The companies that are still making stuff don't have the infrastructure to support their products to repair shops aftermarket either. I have parts that are over 2 years back ordered for some school horns.

-It's not coming back. We can't magically turn on the spigot of Musical instrument manufacturing. The guys that know how to do stuff like spin bells, and draw tubing and do silver plating are retired and long gone. The tooling and Machines don't exist here anymore, and the Chemicals needed for a lot of production are not allowed to be used in the states (not making an environmental comment, just facts about usage allowance) Some notable people are attempting to revive these manufacturing processes and are very skilled but cannot produce to scale. Check out O'Malley Brass in the Chicago area. Full Disclosure, he's a good friend of mine. He's making parts that the manufacturers cannot anymore and even sells to the factories.

-There is literally not a saxophone that is made in the US anymore. With the exception of some extremely small boutique companies making about a dozen a year, so that's not even an option

-Student level instruments aren't worth it to make in the US when there are so many Cheap alternatives out there. I charge $125 to clean and service brass instruments, and there are many trumpets that sell for $119 shipped on many different platforms. We can talk about quality and service all we want, but literally every day I have people telling me the quality made (Taiwan) Instruments are way too expensive even. If that same horn was made in the US (with or without current tariffs) it'd be even more expensive.

-There are REALLY good quality instruments that are made overseas. Japan, Taiwan, England, France, Germany, Switzerland all make outstanding horns. If we fall back to Student level, all of them are made in China, Indonesia, The Phillipines or to a lesser extent India. Even major name brands you recognize and that are American Companies have their student lines made in China.

-These tariffs do nothing to bring back US manufacturing or the production of the raw goods in this industry, because even if we were forging the brass, we'd still then send it overseas to be made into instruments. All they are doing is making the prices higher on the decent stuff to families and schools, and make it harder for Local businesses to sell the good quality imports, because that $100 internet special clarinet will only go up by like $10. You can see how that would increase by a lot for more expensive instruments.

- Luckily, My business isn't solely dependent on sales. We are primarily a repair shop, and we can keep the school instruments going for a long time, but even that has a shelf life. The aforementioned companies that went out of business decades ago were great, but now we can't get parts for any of that, and fabricating replacements (which we do have the capability to do) is prohibitively expensive. Someone mentioned getting into repair. YES! we need more people and there aren't enough. It's a good living and there's a lot of work, but we can't rely on 100 year old horns to provide forever. The average age of instruments in Schools right now is about 45+ years old. Name one other thing in any school that is still usable after 45 years. Repair can stem the tide but there comes a point where new stuff is needed.

*See Red Wing in Minnesota, Renton in Washington State, and Western Iowa tech for their instrument repair programs. I know the directors of all of them and they have a near 100% job placement upon completion while spending less than $30K and less than 2 years before being complete.

-So what am I saying? There are a lot of issues that have nothing to do with the tariffs. The American business attitude towards cheaper products for the last 50 years based on cheap overseas labor in part got us here. None of these issues are addressed by imposing more tariffs. Tariffs fundamentally are there to encourage people to invest domestically in either product purchase or to grow the industry.

-The student musical instrument sector is not big enough like technology products or automobiles to make it more economical to bring factories back to here. All people are looking for is the cheapest thing they can find. I don't mean to be negative about this, and especially with groceries and gas and other things so expensive, I can't blame you. I've got teachers that I work with that will literally buy Cheap import French horns and baritones and throw them away when they get broken or need a cleaning, because they can buy new ones cheaper than I can do even basic maintenance on while paying my technicians a decent wage.

+++On a personal note, the garbage instruments that come through my door break my heart. I got into repairing because I saw kids quit band thinking they were awful, and in a large majority of instances, it had nothing to do with the student or their talent. If a student is given a bad instrument to start on (Either terribly made or old and not maintained correctly) they never have a chance to fall in love with making music. Band doesn't have to be for everyone. There's lots of fun things to spend our time doing, but just like if you gave a kid a flat basketball to learn with; they'll never enjoy playing if they are fighting their tools all the time. A parent, teacher, or anyone else that knowingly gives a kid a subpar or broken instrument is directly responsible if that kid stops playing (sorry, but I'll die on that hill)

-All of these tariffs and are bad for the schools because there's always an administrator that is looking to cut band and music programs. The higher prices just give them more fuel for their argument that it's not worth the cost to the taxpayers. We're in an environment (sorry this is political opinion) where Doctors, Nurses, Teachers, band directors, librarians, and scientists are now considered to be radical and the enemy, so it's easy in a lot of communities to justify eliminating these programs in the name of Saving money. Also, The band room tends to be a safe place for many of the groups that are currently under attack (LGBTQ, Trans, Autistic, etc...) It makes it an even more attractive target to eliminate for some area school boards as well. We've seen recently an increase in officials cancelling concerts because of programming or eliminating arts opportunities because of supposed indoctrination.

I recently got notice from a friend in Asheville, SC that has a shop there finding out that All orchestra has been eliminated for this school year, and another tech friend in Las Vegas where the band program has been stripped down to almost nothing.

It's a never ending battle in our industry. Regardless of the administration these tariffs and the previous ones make it REALLY hard for anyone but the Wal-Marts, Music and Arts, and Sweetwaters of the world to be relevant when to comes to sales. I literally have products that I don't sell because online outfits can sell them for $1 more than I buy them for, with free shipping. With School bids, the big companies get bulk discounts so they can offer things at LESS than my cost as a dealer. I would have to lose money in order to sell to some schools. It makes it harder when I'm bidding using higher quality instruments against cheaper ones also.

Hopefully this sounded informative and not whiny. I love what I do and will support band and music education every day of my life, no matter how hard it gets, but there seems to be more and more challenges every year. I know that the tariffs are trying to target manufacturing but there's so much downstream that gets affected.

Here's a link to NAMM's response to the tariffs as well. The guy that wrote it is really smart and a huge advocate for school music.

https://www.namm.org/news/press-release ... nstruments

Sorry for the long distribution..."

[UncleBeer]

It's my understanding that the proposed tariffs would only affect finished instruments, not parts. If some bright spark wanted to make a fortune, they'd import components from JinBao (or a bunch of other Asian factories; they're happy to sell 'em to you!), and assemble them here. Of course, you'd need talented, experienced assemblers to make this happen.

[bloke]

addendum:

When I was going through band, the economy was not good. This was the early to mid 1970s.
This was an era of a stagnant economy and considerable inflation, which is a pretty devastating combination. It was referred to as "stagflation".

One of the reasons that I decided to switch to the sousaphone halfway through beginner band in junior high was because our band director started talking about us buying our own instruments, and I didn't want to approach my basketball-headed barrel-chested father and ask him to buy me a $250 beginner trumpet. (That was a hell of a lot of money.)

Recently (during the economic shutdown), we all suffered epic orchestrated inflation, whereby all of our savings and earnings are now worth half of what they were - as far as what they will buy, and very few of our incomes have gone up very much.

All of that said, 25% additional wholesale cost on Chinese instruments (with those domestic sellers who mark them up over 100% - whether they are importer wholesalers or importer retailers) could partially be absorbed. They've already absorbed some of the 10% tariff and a lot of the epic inflation without raising their prices much more than a third.

I'm still selling some incredible beginner Chinese trumpets for about $400 and I suspect that people would still buy them for $500. It's always easy to find someone who would disagree with the following statement, but these imported trumpets that I'm selling for 400 bucks are a hell of a lot better than the 1970s American-made Bundy, Conn, and Holton beginner trumpets. They might even be a little bit better than the beloved Olds Ambassador and King Cleveland trumpets.

$400 or $500 today - two additionally emphasizing clarify - is a hell of a lot less money than $250 was in 1970 for a hell of a lot better trumpet. (People also swoon over the old Japanese-made beginner Yamaha trumpets. They were flimsy (thin wall and with a thin layer of nickel plating on the pistons) though they played pretty well. These that I'm selling for $400 are better than those in every way, and every bit as good as the Chinese Yamaha trumpets, which music stores tell parents they must pay $1,500 bucks or so to buy those things.)
Just as with before the Eastlake shut down, a similar King beginner trumpet was also priced around 1,500 bucks, but (like it or not) the pistons, the piston fit, and the slide alignment wasn't as good with those final-era King beginner trumpets vs. those that I'm selling for 400 bucks.

Yeah. It was actually 1969, and not 1970.



This is really what this thread is all about, and let's not pretend that it's not:
"making fun of Trump proposing heavily tariffing imported brass instruments"
The proposed tariff is on finished products made of metal.
A country that doesn't produce its own steel, brass, and other metals really can't defend itself. Whether any of us hates Trump or loves Trump (people make a lot of assumptions about me, but I have not voted in several presidential elections, because no one that had a chance of winning would have been good for America, and those evaluations of mine proved themselves out and arguably), the previous sentence is the truth.
Most political memes on Facebook (regardless of who they target) are stupid, but so are most people who read them and who subsequently get all worked up by them.

[bisontuba]

The oracle has spoken....

[JCTuba67]

It's my understanding that the proposed tariffs would only affect finished instruments, not parts. If some bright spark wanted to make a fortune, they'd import components from JinBao (or a bunch of other Asian factories; they're happy to sell 'em to you!), and assemble them here. Of course, you'd need talented, experienced assemblers to make this happen.

That’s basically not true. The actual Commerce Department proposal specifically includes both finished brass instruments AND their parts and accessories.

The Federal Register notice literally lists:

“Brass-wind musical instruments and parts and accessories thereof”and gives two tariff classifications: HTSUS 9205.10.0000 for brass-wind instruments and HTSUS 9209.99.4080 for parts and accessories. Commerce is proposing that these products generally be subject to a 25% Section 232 tariff if the proposal is ultimately adopted. (Federal Register)

So the idea that somebody could simply order bells, valve sections, branches, slides, braces, etc. from JinBao, bolt them together in the U.S., and automatically avoid the proposed tariff is not what the proposal says. Dedicated imported musical-instrument components can fall under the parts classification too.

There could obviously be some customs-classification differences with things like raw sheet brass, generic tubing, screws, or other materials that aren’t imported specifically as finished musical-instrument parts. But that’s a completely different situation from importing a nearly complete tuba in component form.

And another thing people keep missing: this is still only a proposal. The Commerce Department is accepting public comments through August 27, 2026 and is specifically asking about whether domestic production can meet demand and what the economic impact would be. August 27 is the comment deadline, not some magical date where every imported tuba suddenly gets hit with a new tariff. (Federal Register)

So, no, the loophole isn’t simply “import the JinBao in pieces and assemble it here.” The actual government document pretty clearly anticipated parts as well as complete instruments.

[tubatodd]

Smaller brass still has US made options from beginner (I believe) to pro model horns. But for tubas, there really aren't any horns (least of which Pro) being made in the US. While I feel the spirit of this is "buy American" it's going to end up just being "You want a tuba? It will be 20 bazillion dollars kid." I also don't see any companies doing what the Japanese car makers are doing and opening factories in the US to get around tariffs. I don't know what the solution is here. But now I feel like I should start hording tubas. I guess I started that when I bought a 3rd CC tuba.