{"id":638671,"date":"2025-12-17T18:44:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T18:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/638671\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T18:44:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T18:44:18","slug":"trumps-tariffs-are-choking-small-us-manufacturers-even-those-making-music-magic-trump-tariffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/638671\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s tariffs are choking small US manufacturers \u2013 even those making music magic | Trump tariffs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Julie Robbins and her team at <\/a>EarthQuaker Devices have made guitar pedals for some of the biggest names in the world of music<\/a>. The Smashing Pumpkins<\/a>, Radiohead<\/a>, PJ Harvey<\/a> and others have sought out the company\u2019s<\/a> bespoke, handmade pedals for their unique sounds and designs. Its most popular model, Plumes<\/a>, has sold over 67,000 devices.<\/p>\n

Their made-from-scratch effects petals use more than 1,000 components, many which are imported directly from countries such as China and Vietnam or are bought from companies that bring them in from overseas.<\/p>\n

But almost a year into the Trump administration\u2019s tariffs regime, business for the company, headquartered in Akron, Ohio, is not looking good.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tariffs are adding up to 30% to our costs. I would have at least a couple of new positions open now if it weren\u2019t for the tariffs,\u201d says Robbins.<\/p>\n

So far, the company has eaten 100% of that extra cost, but now that\u2019s no longer financially feasible.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tariffs are of no benefit to manufacturing in America. The stated goals of the tariffs were to reshore manufacturing, negotiate better trade terms and raise money for the US treasury. It\u2019s just not possible to do all those things simultaneously,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels like gaslighting.\u201d<\/p>\n

The region incorporating Cleveland, Youngstown and Akron was once regarded as the backbone of US industrial activity in a state with the third largest manufacturing output<\/a> in the country after California and Texas.<\/p>\n

But Donald Trump\u2019s tariffs<\/a>, meant to bring manufacturing jobs and companies that left for lower cost countries beginning in the 1960s, back to the US, is having a significant effect on these communities. For a region that lost half its population during the latter 20th century and in recent years has been fighting to revive its manufacturing and industrial industries, the tariffs represent a major bump in the road for communities that now find themselves shedding thousands of jobs<\/a> a year and at a rate far higher than other midwestern states.<\/p>\n

A recently released report<\/a> has found that one-in-three manufacturing companies in northeast Ohio have reported being affected by tariff costs and that their tariff-related losses, at 16%, are nearly double that of any related gains of 9%.<\/p>\n

\u201cNortheast Ohio producers are often reliant on inputs that are simply not being produced in vast quantities within the US, even with tariffs in place to advantage domestic producers, and likely will not be unless the price for which the inputs sell increases substantially to make domestic production feasible,\u201d says Jonathan Ernest, an assistant professor of economics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.<\/p>\n

Akron, a post-industrial city that\u2019s lost 100,000 residents since the heady days of American manufacturing in the 1960s, is once again facing the prospect of economic decline and layoffs. In August, a major manufacturing employer announced it\u2019s closing two molding plants<\/a> due to poor earnings.<\/p>\n

Across the region, manufacturers are downsizing<\/a>, eliminating jobs and pausing operations<\/a> due to economic uncertainty and rising expenses fueled by tariff policies.<\/p>\n

Having lost 2m factory jobs across the Rust belt in the 12 years before 2011, the region over the last decade has doubled down on manufacturing, according to reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the basis for the tariffs is to bring back manufacturing to the US, but a report<\/a> published by the Manufacturing Advocacy and Growth Network (Magnet) found that only 9% have brought back more production from overseas this year. It also found that efforts to innovate in northeastern Ohio have been scaled back due to the wider economic uncertainty created by tariffs, specifically that: \u201cWith limited bandwidth and shrinking budgets, smaller firms are deferring nonessential projects like R&D and product launches to stay stable in the short term.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ernest says he doesn\u2019t expect a sharp rebound or reshoring in the short term.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst, the long lead-time means that any substantial growth in the manufacturing sector \u2013 building new plants, facilities [or] foundries \u2013 would take years to be planned, funded, approved, built, and then finally operated,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other reason is that while manufacturing employment has decreased in the US, manufacturing output has continued to rise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some companies are looking to employ tariff workarounds such as foreign trade zones, which allow companies and importers to defer duty payments on products coming from overseas.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had a busy year with foreign trade zone<\/a> activations and have several more in process,\u201d says David Gutheil, chief operating officer at the port of Cleveland, which has recorded a fall of 15-20% in cargo this year compared to 2024. That\u2019s been attributed to tariffs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of our general cargo is non-containerized, high-grade steel imported from various locations in northern and central Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says that importers moving goods through the port are reporting tariff stress.<\/p>\n

Still, not all companies say they are struggling<\/a>, while others are hanging on to the hope that the tariffs may eventually bear fruit. According to the above-mentioned Magnet report, two-thirds of manufacturers surveyed say they see their businesses growing in 2026.<\/p>\n

Still, for small businesses, the tariffs have hit particularly hard.<\/p>\n

While some of the 35 staffers at EarthQuaker Devices painstakingly turn bare circuit boards into exquisite guitar pedals, others have been taken away from their regular duties to format profit and loss Excel sheets in an attempt to forecast the fallout of a seemingly ever-changing wave of tariff rates and to set product sales prices.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no support for small businesses right now. Partly because of DOGE, partly because of Project 2025<\/a>,\u201d says Robbins, referring to the Heritage Foundation think tank\u2019s controversial roadmap the Trump administration has sought to enact across a swathe of US policies and politics.<\/p>\n

She notes that a $50,000 grant the company received several years ago from the state of Ohio that was dependent on EarthQuaker Devices hiring more staffers is now being recalled due to economic forces that are in part attributable to tariffs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only reason we do this is to have jobs. It\u2019s not cheaper or easier than doing anything else,\u201d says Robbins.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want to make anything else; we have dedicated our lives to perfecting this craft.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Julie Robbins and her team at EarthQuaker Devices have made guitar pedals for some of the biggest names…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":638672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3090],"tags":[51,1700,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-638671","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115736390224177916","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/638672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}