Trump’s Tariffs Could Hit You in an Unexpected Place: Your Vinyl Collection

As the chaotic rollout of President Donald Trump’s tariffs last week rattled the nerves of companies across nearly every industry in America and around the globe, one small business owner in the San Francisco Bay Area was trying to figure out if he could finagle his way through a loophole.

Eric Mueller of the punk rock record label Pirates Press was wondering whether he could classify his company’s records—which include colored vinyl releases by bands like Rancid, the Slackers, and Cock Sparrer—as “informational material.” Doing so would allow the records to be imported from overseas pressing plants without incurring a tariff under a little-known law.

More than anything Mueller is hoping to find peace of mind. “The volatility is insane,” he says. “We had a couple dozen shipments leave in the past few days, and we’re trying to figure out what we’re supposed to bill people!”

The Trump administration’s erratic on-again, off-again approach to tariffs is seeding general confusion throughout the record industry. Manufacturers and brokers, mom-and-pop and otherwise, are aligned in recognizing that any additional costs incurred by tariffs will ultimately be passed onto consumers. Even a 10 percent increase incurred by Trump’s (as of this moment) revised, across-the-board tariffs could make a significant dent in an industry already negatively impacted by inflation and rising costs. Recent industry estimates suggest that the proposed tariffs could jack up costs by 24 percent and could lead to more production being offshored. Mueller estimates that a new vinyl record may retail for $30 to $40, up from $15 to $25 just a few years ago.

“Look at the math: Peoples’ incomes haven’t gone up by that much,” he says. “The industry is definitely receding. Factories are struggling. If the cost of records goes up, it’s not a good thing. It’s not going to help anybody.”

But the industry’s potential, label-saving exception comes from the Berman Amendment, which provides exemptions to “informational materials” like books, films, tapes, CDs, and other media containing material protected under the First Amendment, regardless of their country of origin. Passed by Congress in 1988 and authored by Democratic Representative Howard Berman, the amendment was one of the earliest obstructions in lawmakers’ attempts to ban TikTok, with a Washington Post headline calling it “an obscure hurdle.”

“What this exemption does,” Mueller explains, “is make sure there’s still a free flow of information.”

A representative of the Recording Industry Association of America, a trade organization representing the US music industry, tentatively confirms that the “current understanding” is that imports of records are excluded from Trump’s tariffs.

For the record industry, that’s good news. Despite the uptick in homegrown manufacturing over the past decade, which has followed from the resurgent popularity of vinyl records themselves, a great many of the albums stocking shelves of record stores are manufactured abroad. Czech-based conglomerate GZ Media is the largest record presser in the world, churning out about 70 million records a year. Under the current Berman Amendment carve-outs, all of those records could be imported Stateside without being impacted by massive tariffs. But that doesn’t mean the US vinyl industry is out of the woods. (A spokesperson for GZ declined to speak to WIRED, saying that the company has “decided not to comment on topics related to politics or tariffs.”)

“There’s no tariff paid on importing a completed record, but there are tariffs paid bringing in the materials,” explains Michael Greig Thomas, director of the Athens, Georgia, vinyl manufacturer Echo Base. Actual, US-based vinyl companies stand to face hefty increases, importing raw materials essential to the manufacturing process: paper products from Canada, aluminum discs used in stamping the records (called lacquers) from Japan, and so on. Most essential of all, of course, is the actual vinyl.

The bulk of record manufacturers, in the US and elsewhere, source polyvinyl chloride (PVC) from Thailand. Petrochemical companies like NeoTech Composite and the Plastic and Chemicals Public Company (a subsidiary of the Siam Cement Group Corporation) supply the overwhelming majority. The Trump administration had originally threatened Thailand with a substantial 36 percent tariff, which would naturally raise costs for US manufacturers.

Certain specialized industrial equipment used in the processes (boilers that heat the PVC pellets, chillers to control temperature) also tend to be manufactured and serviced from abroad. Steven Walker, owner of mom-and-pop manufacturer 33 Grooves Records, is worried that repairs could soon become exceedingly costly. “Everything is Asian or European,” he says. “My machines were made in Hong Kong. And if I have to get any parts sourced from China, it’s pretty scary.” (As of this writing, Chinese imports have been hit with a whopping 125 percent import tariff.)

There’s an absurd irony here, which is perhaps not all that shocking given the overwhelming erraticism of Trump’s economic schemes. Because the import and export of vinyl records is exempted from tariffs, US brokers can still get their product pressed abroad in Central Europe and shipped back Stateside, with little in the way of additional cost beyond the usual duties. Meanwhile, brick-and-mortar US-based manufacturers face potential increases in their bottom line, as they have little option but to import their raw materials from across the globe. “It’s a consistent problem that has stifled the vinyl record-pressing industry in the US,” says Echo Base’s Thomas. “The bigger companies are kind of like an oligarchy, and most of those companies are external to the US.”

Another major problem is advocacy. So far, the Trump administration’s approach to tariffs has benefited bigger businesses. The White House seemingly plucks a number out of the air, and then representatives from across different industries line up to wheedle the number down. Vinyl record manufacturing is a billion-dollar business, supporting over 1,500 jobs nationwide. But it is still, as Thomas put it, something of a “cottage industry.” It certainly doesn’t necessarily have the kind of presidential pull enjoyed by tech companies and banks. “There are some industries that are going to be better represented by lobbies,” Thomas says. “There’s a really big concern that our voices are not going to be heard. Not everyone knows the most expedient way to speak to their local representative and get things moving up the chain.”

The looming threat of a broader economic recession also figures into industry-wide anxieties threatening not just record manufacturers and retailers but trickling down to labels and artists.

“It’s only going to hurt the industry in the grand scheme of things,” Mueller says. “The alternative to buying a record is not paying to support artists and just continuing to stream records, where the artists earn a fraction of the cost.”

Beyond increasing prices, both for manufacturers and the end-consumer crate digging at their local record shop, the feeling of economic uneasiness can breed hostility.

Dave Eck, who runs Waxy Poodle Record in Wisconsin, says Trump’s spiked trade rhetoric has impacted his relationships as much as the actual policies. Eck conducts a lot of business in Canada, which the president has decried as “nasty” and repeatedly threatened to annex as America’s 51st state. It’s a tense situation, which has fostered anti-American sentiment north of the border. Where a “Made in USA” label on a record was once a mark of quality, now it suggests something different. “All my vendors up there don’t like me anymore, because I’m American,” Eck says. “I’m having a harder time getting my product turned around, because the whole feeling in Canada right now is not to support us.”

Of course there are, at some stops in the supply chain, a few Trump loyalists. Eck recalls a cardboard box salesman who recently encouraged him to bone up on some of Donald Trump’s negotiating tactics. He laughs: “He said I’ll understand better if I read The Art of the Deal!”