Trump’s tariffs can hit you in an unexpected place: your vinyl set

While Donald Trump’s chaos last week laid the nerves of companies in any industry in the United States and around the world, a small business owner in the San Francisco Gulf tried to find out if he could earn his way through a hole.

Eric Muller of the Pirate Rocks record label was surprised by whether he could classify his company records – which includes colored vinyl versions by groups such as Rancid, The Slacs and Sparrer Cock – as “information materials”. Doing so will cause records from overseas plants without importing tariffs under a quantitative law.

More than anything, Muller hopes to find peace. “The swings are insane,” he says. “We have had a dozen cargo in the past few days and we are trying to find out what to forgive people!”

The irregular approach to the tariffs has caused a general confusion in the recording industry. Manufacturers and agents, mother and pop, and otherwise, are aligned to determine that any additional costs caused by tariffs are ultimately transmitted to consumers. Even a 10 percent increase in Trump (from this moment) that has been reformed, various tariffs across the board can be significant in a industry that has a negative impact on inflation and cost increases. Recent industry estimates suggest that proposed tariffs can increase 24 percent of the costs and can lead to more production overseas. Muller estimates that a new Vinyl record may be retained for $ 30 to $ 40, from $ 15 to $ 25 just a few years ago.

“Look at mathematics: people’s income has not increased,” he says. “The industry is definitely repaying. The factories are trying. If the cost of the record goes up, it’s not a good thing. It doesn’t help anyone.”

But the exception of the potential and savings in the industry comes from Bremen’s reforms, which offers “information materials” exemptions such as books, videos, strips, CDs and other media containing protected materials, regardless of its country of origin. In 1988, it was approved by Congress and authored by the Democratic Howard Bremen, which was one of the first obstacles to legislators’ efforts to ban Tiktok, calling it a “vague obstacle” with the Washington Post.

Muller explains: “What this exemption does is” Make sure there is still a free flow of information. “

A representative of the US Recording Industry Association, a business organization representing the US music industry, experested with the “current understanding” that imports are excluded from Trump’s tariffs.

For the recording industry, this is a good news. Despite the emergence of home production in the past decade, which has followed its live popularity, many of the albums are produced on the shelves of stores recorded overseas. The Czech GZ Media is the largest record pressure in the world and destroys about 70 million records a year. According to current Bremen’s current reforms, all of these records can come together without the impact of huge tariffs. But that does not mean that the US vinyl industry is out of the forest. (A spokesman for GZ refused to talk to Wired and said the company “had decided not to comment on policy or tariff issues.”)