Apogee Electronics Joins Moog In Asking For Help Fighting Trump Tariffs

Audio interface manufacturer Apogee Electronics has joined Moog Music in asking for musicians to help it fight the recently enacted Trump Tariffs.

In June, Moog warned that the Trump Tariffs Could Kill U.S. Synth Manufacturing. Moog says that the 25% import tax on Chinese components used in synthesizers and other electronics essentially handicaps US manufacturers, while companies that manufacture abroad and import completed synths will not be impacted.

Now Apogee says that, “like most, companies we rely on electronic components from China. In many instances, there is not a second source for these components outside of China. As of July 6th, the cost of materials and components from China has risen by 25%.”

Apogee says that this 25% tax on electronic components from China, will ultimately result in price increases, making them less competitive.

The company is asking its customers and other musicians to help by writing to your elected representatives and ask them to support a quick resolution to these tariffs. Details are available at the Apogee site.

64 thoughts on “Apogee Electronics Joins Moog In Asking For Help Fighting Trump Tariffs”

  3. I heard, recently, on Bloomberg that the price of yachts is also on the rise, due to the tariffs. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that employers are trying something new: hiring people with no experience. In other words, for the first time in a decade employers are hiring at least a few American graduates, in their fields of study. How did it come to pass that Democrats moved to the big-government anti-working-man side of the equation? So far as I can tell, the Democrats only stand for cultural work output appropriation, and a rainbow of trendy friends to selfie with. And when Democrats say they’re for peace, they don’t mean THAT kind of peace, you know, the kind that quits bombing babies (for example, this week the same Saudi Arabia that Hillary Clinton sanctioned bomb buying by slew 2 dozen kids who were riding in a school bus, in Yemen – you won’t see those knitted pink hat ladies protesting for the fallen babies, since it’s just a type of abortion, after all, and in the case of the maimed, but a type of circumcision, both of which the neocon Democrats support, the Right supporting only one of those brutal archaic practices) – but they mean quitting bombing some babies and not other babies. It’s just two types of neocon, the Republicans being now the party that is friendlier to the lower middle class, and the Democrats, which are friendlier toward the very poor, but stunningly violently hostile toward anyone who is a white person by no fault of their own. So we have this weird shift in politics. The shift is that Republicans are LESS warmongering, basically are the neocons-lite, while the Democrats have moved extreme neocon. As you know, in social issues, such as gay rights in education (indoctrination being the opponent perspective), and the environment (particularly the fad science of CO2-did-all-the-bad-things), the Democrats retain still a left-wing perspective, but one with hegemonic features (imposing their mob will silencing opposing voices, degrading, in the public square, those persona non grata, such as Alex Jones).

    So we can actually have a situation where people are saying, “wow, Trump is horrible, he’s raising the price of my rich boy toys”, and they can say this genuinely believing they have a progressive complaint.

    1. Please keep your politics out of this. American businesses making products in America are struggling to compete with companies that make their products overseas, as the statements from Moog, Apogee, and many other manufacturers have expressed. This isnt a partisan issue, but it baffles me how you can, presumably as an American citizen, push back against the interests of the American worker and support the proliferation of starvation wages here and abroad. These companies employ skilled Americans and provide high quality tools for our craft, and I dont understand why any American or otherwise would fight against good wages and job safety.

      1. > Please keep your politics out of this.

        This whole thread is politics because the original post is political. Keep your non-politics out of political threads, good sir! Good day to you!

    2. The unemployment rate dropped from 10% when Obama took office to under 4.6% when he was leaving, but yeah that final .7% drop during Trump’s presidency sure is proof that Republicans work harder to get us jobs!

    5. Democrats left wing???? Get out in to the rest of the western world and you will see they are far from that. Here in the UK we think you are bonkers with no NHS and the slaughter caused by guns. Gay rights in education, yes I will have that. I want future generations to keep the improvements with integrating communities. Have a look who is banning press members from the WH if you want to worry about silencing opposing voices that are actually telling the truth. I will let you make the case for Alex Jones being an equally accurate source of information to the banned member of the press.

      Employing people with no experience was ever thus. This is how almost everyone starts working. My company takes on apprentices and they are offered education up to degree level plus a full time job. I know because I train them. I work in pro audio.

      Are the tariffs helping this? In the States the employment rates aren’t growing as quickly as they were. Jobs go off shore because companies want to make things cheaper and customers want to pay less (I understand this is a generalisation). Having got used to cheaper prices from Chines produced goods, are consumers willing to pay more? Who are the companies sending manufacturing offshore? Percentage wise it is the big companies and are these the “Democrat/Leftwing” type of organisations? The Apogees of the world probably have no choice.

      I would love to see manufacturing come back to the UK. Is the best way putting up tariffs, investing here etc? It is a mix of these and many other thing. It definitely doesn’t involve Brexit…… It shouldn’t be the large companies getting huge incentives to set up manufacturing bases here (US/UK/EU wherever we are) and deliver very little in terms of jobs.

      Sorry if this is out of scope for Synthtopia.

  4. What Moog and Apogee have in common is both claim their products are Made in USA.

    That’s good news for them since they won’t have to pay any tariffs that benefit those godless communists overseas… who have arsenals of world destroying nukes, no less.

    Yup. No problems at all for anyone who says they are Made in USA.

    Unless they are lying of course, but who would do such a thing!

    1. “Yup. No problems at all for anyone who says they are Made in USA.”

      Nope – the Trump taxes are only on imported parts, not imported electronics devices.

      So Made In USA electronics are f***ed until US salaries drop to $2/hour, like Chinese salaries.

      And then the Chinese will STILL have an advantage, because they won’t have to pay an additional 25% tax on their parts like US companies.

        2. Merriam-Webster Dictionary: Tariff: a schedule of duties imposed by a government on imported or in some countries exported goods
          Merriam Webster Dictionary: Duty: tax; especially : a tax on imports

          2. If you prefer the reliable, then here’s a dictionary:

            The 1828 MW shows how the language had begun eroding already, but there were holdouts. Here’s a snip from the definition of tax, which at first supports the loose meaning, but is cautionary:
            “tax is a term of general import, including almost every species of imposition on persons or property for supplying the public treasury, as tolls, tribute, subsidy, excise, impost, or customs. But more generally, tax is limited to the sum laid upon polls, lands, houses, horses, cattle, professions and occupations.”

            Surely we all need to work on making the language less general and more precise.

            After all, at this point, the “Microsoft Tax” must be literally a tax, if we are to take it to be anything we are compelled to pay, above the usual amount (I am assuming nobody here is silly enough to be running anything other than Linux).

    1. dawning – only factories in the US have to pay the 25% tax.

      So companies like Moog and Apogee will save 25% on their parts by moving their factories OUT of the US.

      Time to move your factories out of America, if you want your company to survive.

      Trump fans are apparently stupid enough to think that a 25% tax is good for US companies. Don’t be stupid like them!

      1. The point is to move the component manufacturing back to America, so that we are not dependent on the rest of the world for all the bits that are vital to modern technology.

        1. caligari – taxing manufacturers isn’t a logical strategy, if you think the goal is to move manufacturing back to the US.

          Chinese companies have people working for $10-12/day making these parts. A 25% tax on buying their parts is never going to make it economical to bring that manufacturing to the US, and in the meantime, it will kill off a lot of good US companies.

          If moving production back to the US was the real goal, the way to achieve it would be by subsidizing parts manufacturers, not new taxes.

          1. exactly, there are many more difficult to outsource jobs that rely on cheap components that become more attractive to outsource when there are loopholes like this.

            If you patch the loophole and make imported products also subject to the tariff, you just end up with higher prices either way and lost jobs at American manufacturers/assemblers.

            If you manufacture the components here, you’ve shifted jobs from higher skill to lower skill and that might be good for some people but it’s not going to remain competitive for long considering the effect of automation.

          2. Good thing they are not increasing taxing on manufacturers then.

            Lots of people need to do some serious reading on the difference between taxes and tariffs.

            Subsidies for any industry are a terrible solution. It props up a false economy that collapses once those subsidies are removed. Look at the pipe tobacco industry now with new FDA regs and subsidies for farmers being cut.

          3. Communist China needs your money, give it to them.

            Or find a way to return to the way America used to be, not dependent on foreign child slave labor practices.

            1. Have a read of your history books. Before their civil war half the slaves were under 16. This excuses nothing but it does make it tricky to decide when you want America to return to.

                1. You’ll have to try a lot harder than that. I don’t mind that you’ve not identified the time you wanted to go back to. I expect you’ll know that there would be less need for suicide nets in a cotton field. I hate to remind readers of understandable sensitivity that it would be the lynchings people would be wary of as the cause of terrible early death.

                  1. Thanks for making my point for me. It should never be acceptable at any time. Humans have a long ways to go, first they must get passed their egos and brainwashing.

      2. That’s factually inaccurate. They’re not taxes. They’re tariffs. China is not requires by Democrats to have worker safety laws equivalent to the United states, nor healthcare, nor retirement. Of course, the Republicans haven’t demanded that either. Somehow, they care about, specifically, any people politically convenient, and only insofar as it serves politically, to attack their opponents. However, people who exist by the millions, in dreadful conditions, are only defended by the ridiculous promise to smash the patriarchy and herald thereby a gold age, a utopia. Hardly the sort of policy you can put on the dinner table in rural India, or China, or Mexico, or Bangladesh, or Pakistan. But surely they should be more grateful for all the nice sentiments that were felt toward them.

        1. “That’s factually inaccurate. They’re not taxes. They’re tariffs.”
          See also:
          Merriam-Webster Dictionary: “Tariff”: a schedule of “duties” imposed by a government on imported or in some countries exported goods
          Merriam-Webster Dictionary: “Duty”: tax; especially : a tax on imports

        2. Sorry Aaron, you are wrong. Tariffs are definitely taxes, as demonstrated by numerous other correspondents on this thread.

          May I suggest that given that you have this fundamental aspect of your argument incorrect, you go back over your other statements and fact check them too? I think you’ll find that most of what you have written needs, er…re-appraisal.

          Peace

    2. Also even if anyone wanted to make the tarrifed parts here it would take decades to get of the ground (you don’t just build and start a plant for these sort of parts ). In many cases it’d be impossible . You’d also have a major hard time finding skilled people (education and time can solve that to a degree but it doesn’t buy you experience per se).
      Even if one did get the plants off the ground , many of the rare raw materials needed then need to be imported , oh and Chinese companies bought most of the mines across the world where these raw materials even exist.

      The modern and high tech supply chain is complex and is truly a global thing, anyone who thinks one can do it in 1 place has a very simplistic understanding of how this stuff actually gets made.

  6. US manufacturing jobs are lost more to automation than to trade (https://www.ft.com/content/dec677c0-b7e6-11e6-ba85-95d1533d9a62). Jobs reclaimed through tariffs will be muted by automation and in the end, loopholes between imported components vs products/devices only serve to push US manufacturers to the Apple model (engineered in the US, manufactured in China).

    If you care about lost manufacturing jobs, you should be looking at job retraining programs — making our labor force more dynamic — because in a healthy post industrial economy, you see fewer but more productive manufacturing jobs which means that it’s not the key to a new era of American prosperity — you can find prosperity in new sectors created by technology and changing markets. Future success depends on better access to education, the ability to survive while investing in your skills so you can land a skilled job rather than struggling to make ends meet at a low skilled job.

    I don’t mean to devalue laborers either; they do hard, often grueling work that I wouldn’t have the strength to do. The unfortunate truth is that machines don’t feel pain or fatigue in the same ways as human do, and people with lower costs of living and even narrower prospects for more specialized jobs are willing to work for less money.

    These are truths that we need to work forward from, not claw our way backward from.

  7. blame comey, russian agent assange.. and yourself. 1 in 10 bernie sanders supporters ended up voting for trump. “but her emails!” idiots.

    1. Wow, this guy as well as the U.S. people defending this tariff. certainly none of you are informed enough to talk on this subject, especially when you’re bringing up “emails”- the kind of the signifiers that show how dangerously brainwashed you all are on that continent.

  8. Can’t the Moog company just have political opinions and take political actions quietly? Frankly it diesn’t make much sense to me – it’s a company, not a person. Does their marketing department presume all their customers are Democrats and Social Justice Warriors? I guess somebody near the top has already made that presumption of their employees – or maybe Bob designed some kind of hive mind technology towards the end.

    I’m not sticking my own flag in the sand, I just wonder about the wisdom of pushing a company as a political entity; surely that can only harm your business?

    1. Since when is business being against new taxes ‘political’?

      Trumpers trying to make basic business into a political thing.

      PS: Moog CEO is a big right winger, but like most CEO’s, is against new taxes and protectionism.

  9. Yay, finally a decent political argumentation (or not). Not anyone commenting on Trump’s “reason” for the tariffs: “national security.” Oh damn.

    Not sure about Apogee but I’m pretty convinced that 90 % or more of USA products are made in China.
    Probably designed in US but that’s a different thing.

      1. That’s going to happen regardless. The on board sim that can be reprogrammed from inside the software will allow you to jump carriers at the push of a button.

        Then, without the need to finance a phone with a service contract from your carrier, Apple will finance them directly to customers.

        Where do think prices go from there?

    2. Moog and Apogee ARE made in the USA, unlike most of their competitors.

      Please read and understand before commenting. Their point is they have been here for 20-30yrs and want to stay here….but due to how the tarrifs work (someone didn’t think trough I guess) and counter-intuitivelyjt makes it far more expensive for them.

      If anything financially it would be a motivation for both companies to move their manufacturing outside of the USA, neither wants to do that and decided to complain in the hopes the law can be made more fair so at least they don’t get punished (and you price wise) for being made here .

      It’s counter-intuitive but that’s sort of the thing with unintended consequences.

  11. moog take advantage of ultra cheap components from then charge a fortune
    behringer take advantage of cheap components in china and then sell for a reasonable price…
    be like behringer and you might garner some backing

    1. Be like Behringer? You mean never innovate? Just steal/copy other companies products and buy up reputable but loss making companies for peanuts and sack lots of people.The reason Behringers products are cheap are because they need to sell lots of them to pay back their massive loans. And of course because China wants dollars.

      1. You illustrate exactly the mind set of all those synth companies who are whining now, always pointing to others instead of doing things differently yourself.

        1. BUT the thing is that they are doing things different and original instead of just copying like Behringer does. Those companies you criticize of course could move production to china and seek support from the Chinese government like Behringer does but do we really want everything made in China by low paid workers with very few benefits and less work safety than western workers get?

  14. The idea that Moog, Apogee or any business that manufactures instruments in the US would have to increase their costs dramatically because of the Tariffs is being disingenuous.

    The Tariffs will primarily be only affecting certain electronic components. Namely resistors, capacitors and pots. PCB’s and Transistors do not fall under the tariffs unless they are being used for Semi Conductor purposes. Something Moog doesn’t have to worry about.

    What does this mean with the 25% tax? In the end it should mean hardly anything to a company like Moog. We are talking about parts that are cost literal pennies and are bought in huge lots.

    Resistors. Pssh, Rolls of 5000 resistors will go up a handful of dollars. This is nothing to panic about.

    Capacitor prices already shot up months ago and there was no panic about price increases then.

    Pots will be the biggest impact but hardly enough to warrant any major cost increase on the customer. A company like Moog who already marks up their product prices significantly has no reason to not be able to cover the costs. Even then at most this would warrant a $10 increase at retail.

    I don’t agree with the Tariffs and I certainly am not a fan of Trump but the idea that a company like Moog or Apogee will have to suddenly increase their prices because of them comes across as dishonest. What I don’t want either is companies to start a panic and increase their prices based on fallacies.

    1. You may want to update your info. What you stated was true only for the first wave of tarrifs. Now it includes most semiconductors for example as well.

  15. I don’t know what from what. until the day of $3000 iphone, I got no concern for now as I am no fans or interested in buying already what I think are overpriced products.

    1. So you’d prefer if they setup their manufacturing say in Canada (keeping cheap labor out of the picture here).
      Then they’d not get the parts tarrif and not tarrifed when importing the finished product. Fwiw these products assembled in China (say Behringer/Focusrite as examples for both) are not tarrifed when imported (nor are they tarrifed on the parts).
      Sourcing many parts locally isn’t possible as nobody makes them.
      I think it’s a good thing they always have been here …and prefer they speak up simply asking to not get penalized for manufacturing in the US rather than be quiet and move. I think it is to their credit they feel so strongly and always have about making their products here.

  18. Not gonna buy anything Apogee or Moog ever again. Except maybe 2nd hand, just they won‘t get any money from me. Bunch of hypocrites.
    Moog died with Bob. This people are a shame to the name Moog!!

  19. hihi, the man with the orange hair is to old to understand global economy.
    enjoy your alternative facts/ lies.
    up next in this theater a war with some country with oil to boost the american economy. ?

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