President Trump announced today that he’s increasing tariffs on Vietnamese-made goods more than 500% over what they were at the beginning of his administration, a move that’s likely to result in higher costs for the many musicians that use Apple devices:
While the President says in his announcement that Vietnam will pay these taxes, this appears to be a false statement. Tariffs are taxes paid by Americans that import goods.
Tariffs are popular with some politicians, because tariffs can be used strategically to punish bad international actors, and because tariffs can be used to raise your taxes, without it showing up on your annual tax bill. But economists and fiscal conservatives are overwhelmingly against steep tariffs, because they historically have resulted in higher prices, decreased trade and long-term harm to US economic growth.
In this case, the import taxes Apple pays on importing the products it makes in Vietnam are increasing to 20%. So, it seems likely that Apple will pass at least some of the cost of this tax hike on to American buyers.
Apple Insider’s William Gallagher writes:
“The 20% rate that Apple must now pay on imports of the iPad, Apple Watch, and almost all AirPods, is dramatically higher than before. While Trump previously threatened a blanket 46% tariff on Vietnam, prior to his “Liberation Day,” the tariff was less than 4%.”
Why This Matters To Musicians
Musicians tend to use Apple products at a much higher rate than average, because of the company’s traditional focus on content creators.
In addition, the fact that iOS has been optimized to support audio and MIDI effectively and with minimal latency has resulted in it dominating the world of mobile music making applications.
Earlier this year, Apple shifted manufacturing of its products to Vietnam, where possible, in response to the Trump administration’s trade war with China.
At their earnings call in May, Apple CEO Tim Cook said “For the June quarter, we expect Vietnam to be the country of origin for almost all iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and AirPods products sold in the U.S.”
This move allowed the company to avoid raising prices for American buyers. With Trump’s latest tariff hike, though, it looks like Apple’s strategy won’t allow the company to avoid big tax hikes in the long run on the goods it sells in America.
What do you think of the Trump administration’s tax hike on Vietnamese imports? Do you think it will lead to higher prices on the Macs, iPads and the other devices Apple makes in Vietnam? Share your thoughts in the comments!
The Trump administration is constantly screwing over Americans and calling it a ‘win’.
If I understand this right, Trump is raising taxes on Americans buying goods made in Vietnam to 20%, not providing any justification for it, and pretending that Vietnam is going to pay it.
Oh yeah – Trump wants you to think that this will result in American selling more “Large Engine Vehicles” to Vietnam. OK, grandpa, let’s get you to bed.
If he had any balls, Trump would be hitting Russia with these tariffs, and actually use tariffs for their intended purpose. Instead, he’s using them to raise OUR taxes and give billionaires huge tax breaks.
The only question I have is how long until he flip-flops on this again?
Two weeks or less.
trump is such a joke. Where does he come with these percentages for his tariffs? He reacts like a 4 year old child, with the emotional maturity of a 4 year old.
trump is the ‘TACO’ so we will see how long his tariff bluff for Vietnam lasts?
I guarantee it isn’t Trump himself that come up with these percentages, there is an army of economists and general number crunchers drawing the blueprints for this stuff.
So American buyers pay a premium of 20% on goods from Vietnam, while Vietnamese buyers can buy American goods without any additional tariffs? The Vietnamese must be in pain laughing.
LOL!!!!!!!!!!! Psycho.
it is 1984 finaly and nobody seeing it clearly. war = peace love = hate en win = lose…. hope everybody wakes up againg! 😉
Indeed.
Let’s keep this about the music, not politics
Sadly, the politics will affect the music. Anyway, music and politics go hand in hand. All those protest songs of the 60s can’t have been for nothing.
Well, if so: President Trump is doing what’s best for America, Go Trump!
It’s your country pal, do what you want. The rest of the world will just continue to laugh at you.
what America should do is stop funding nato so all the countries that are laughing won’t be back by American protection. then we shall see who is laughing
The world is bigger than communists and socialists. Maybe stick to LFOs if this stuff gets your head oscillating — global politics clearly isn’t your strong suit.
We didn’t -all- vote for that idiot.
why did you vote for him?
Just so we’re clear – this was a question related to music gear. If you expect respect, you’d better show some too.
100% respect for music – 0% respect for Trump
ah yes, music, famously apolitical
Tell that to the BBC who are censoring artists in their own country because a foreign government told them to lol
er…..no. They are removing comments or performaces containing comments that a deemed not suitable for broadcast. This might well have an influence from the coutry you dont name doesnt want them but it also has a strong influence from inside the uk
Are you saying that you don’t like that this topic was posted? Or are you saying you don’t like the subject matter of people’s comments?
In the past, folks could discuss/debate various priorities with varying degrees of respect. But now we’re in very strange times where Trump’s supporters are so entirely detached from reality, where they ignore realities, and they invent problems that don’t exist. They demonstrate stratospheric levels of hypocrisy.
This contrast between reality and what Trump and his supports believe can’t really be described as political disagreement. Sometimes people try to frame it that way– saying that people’s protest is because he is in a different party.
Fun facts: Climate change is real; Trump lost in 2020; Trump is a liar and a criminal; Trump has no earthly idea what he’s doing; he lacks curiosity, and just makes $#!+ up as he goes along; and he doesn’t care about consequences.
They’re a fascist, but had the courtesy to ask for permission to admit it.
THAT was the best comment I’ve read all day!
I could not have written this any better.
Thank you!
This is such a tired take. Everything is political even if it’s inconvenient for you to think about.
i use a PC so not bothered about Apple, Apple stuff is already a ripped off built on slave labour.
Doesn’t the US use slave labor? Which other products have you inspected for use of slave labor?
Last time I’ve checked, Microsoft was a U.S. company, too.
You won’t get away that easy, I’m afraid.
i use a PC so not bothered about Apple, Apple stuff is already a rip off built on slave labour.
Rare earth metals and their associated component parts for the tech sector are not in abundance in the USA and your manufacturing sector nonexistent.
You don’t live within some bubble or protective vacuum and you the consumer pay the price of tariffs on all these good as its a tax on the importer that gets passed on to you.
Mac or PC – you’re going to be hit by increases in parts, components, video cards and so on and of course your PC components aren’t manufactured of the backs of labour exploitation at all either ? Don’t be so naive.
As for the Mango Mussolini, a good portion of the world know what a feculent loser he is even if he’s viewed as some “God Annointed” alabaster saviour to the mindless minions.
Your PC is probably made in the same facility as Apple products, using the same workers you allege to be “slave labour”
HP and Dell computers are manufactured by Foxconn, Compal, Wistron and Inventec in factories in multiple countries. Acer, Lenovo and Huawei manufacture in China and Taiwan.
I love apples. Pears and strawberry too.
You should try peaches. Man, I could go for some cold peaches right about now 🙁
I also like peaches.
Apparently, they come from a can.
And they were put there by a man
Was that man working in a factory downtown?
The Presidents of the United States of America !!
Cool thanks I need to see this guys face in the one place on the internet I shouldn’t
We get it Synthhead you voted for him. And didn’t you run the same photo last post you made to show us how influential his policies are in the synth world
It’s just a news update… that might affect every audio production equipment you buy later this year. It’s worth having a blog post about it so people can plan ahead.
We get it synthhead you voted for him . Right?
We don’t care about this person who is cruel and evil and makes the world worse
Please stop deleting my comments – care to comment which of your arbitrary rules I’m breaking?
And you used the same photo last post you made about this almost identical topic
You think anybody cares what this guy says?
You obviously care.
You care so much that you took time out of your day to comment on it, showing just how much you care.
If fact, you care so much that it sounds like you made multiple comments but some got deleted.
It is YOU who is driving the engagement.
Donglebob, great points, although I think you seem to be a little caught up by my use of the statement I don’t care as a colloquialism. It wasn’t meant to be literal. Of course I care about facism.
Also great pickup (Thats sarcasm!) noticing i posted twice. This website has a history of deleting my posts because Synthhead doesn’t like me
, or he makes up a reason. Once he said he needed to hold all of my comments for moderation because I spammed which was a lie, so I’m a little sensitive. Also I called him lazy. I’m allowed to criticize.
No you can’t criticize Synthhead, its part of the Synth constitution
“This website has a history of deleting my posts because Synthhead doesn’t like me”
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the site doesn’t make moderation decisions based on who we ‘like’ or who we agree with. Initial moderation is handled by a cloud-based system, Akismet, which is an industry standard platform for comment screening.
It screens comments for common ‘red flags’ for spam and hate speech. This includes things like links (which 9 times out of 10 are spam) and words that are associated with spam. The most obvious spam is automatically deleted, but other suspect comments are routed for manual moderation.
If your comment is flagged like this, an admin has to review it and determine if it’s clearly hate speech (comments attacking categories of people) or a personal attack (name calling, criticizing people at a personal level). Moderation is done at least once/day, which means that suspect comments may not show up for hours.
Manually moderated comments are reviewed to see if they are spam, hate speech or personal attacks, in which case they are deleted. Otherwise they are cleared.
The system also is more likely to hold your comments for moderation if you’ve got a history of spamming the site or posting comments that have to be deleted.
If your comments are getting flagged for moderation, it’s a reflection of YOUR actions and comment history. The way to address this is by posting comments that are on topic and constructive, and over time the moderation system will be less likely to flag your comments for moderation.
I think it’s a newsworthy post just so you can plan around the price increases in the US since Vietnam is widely used for outsourcing manufacturing.
Um …sorry but a little review of basic arithmetic is in order here.
20% is NOT 500%.
500% as in 5x the initial 4%
the size of the tariff increased by 5 times compared to the previous tariff. the tariff itself isn’t 500%
It’s by 500%, not to 500%.
The increase from 4% to 20% is a 500% increase.
100% of 4 = 4
200% of 4 = 8
300% of 4 = 12
400% of 4 = 16
500% of 4 = 20
For those of you complaining about politics being on this page, you’re joking right? This is a page primarily for new synth/music hardware and software. Prices are listed at the end of each article/post. Tariffs impact those prices. Unfortunately they are relevant. Don’t like it? Read one of the hundreds of other posts. I find this information helpful.
Also, Fuck Trump.
Bart – they are talking about the INCREASE from 4% to 20%.
Which as far as my math can take me, is 400% rather than 500%… but…..
(400% of 4 is 16, increase 4 by 16 gives you 20)
I’m thinking crazy right now.
What if Apple manufactued in the US? I know, I know…prices. But what if? Besides the higher cost of consumer products.
Jobs?
More jobs?
I’m curious since there are a ton of highly intelligent people on here debating. I’m not that smart.
There are minerals involved in manufacturing electronics that the United States literally does not have. Beyond that, we do not have the manufacturing capabilities or workforce. To build up the necessary infrastructure would take significant time and investment
The only effective use of tarriffs are when they are applied to specific industries where a domestic alternative already exists but currently struggles to compete with international competition.
Trump’s tarriffs on entire countries wont help create domestic manufacturing capacity, it’ll just make us all poorer.
They already make the Mac Pro here in Austin TX. Starts at $7k.
I bet the components inside aren’t sourced from the U.S.
In 2021 US colleges graduated 130,000 Engineers with bachelor’s degrees. China graduated 1.4 Million. I’ll skip comparing the average math scores between the two countries.
Then there’s the millions of assembly lines folks with years of skills, experience, training, and support. Plus an expansive supply chain for all the components needed.
And the shameful thing is we handed them this opportunity by outsourcing these jobs and helping them build their infrastructure with the singular goal of allowing corporations to achieve higher profit margins. Consumers get cheaper prices, but make no mistake, this was largely done to pay executives and stockholders more.
As for undoing all this? Good luck. We’re busy banning books, undercutting education, chasing out promising immigrant engineers, and teaching kids to count to 10 Commandments instead of pre-calculus.
Very well written!
Undoing all of this is a bizzare, narcissistic fantasy in the mind of a dementia-riddled president.
Ideally, that would be the solution. However, Apple is a capitalist company… they will do whatever they can to keep profits high. Moving manufacturing to the USA is not in their cards since building all the factories would take significant capital. I think Apple wants to take the gamble that this tariff fight stuff will be over once Trump’s term is over so they can just keep moving from overseas to overseas manufacturers until then.
I really want more manufacturing in the USA, but the way our country is setup, it’s setup for outsourcing. Unless the next president does the same, these efforts won’t mean much.
But it’s all about capitalism in the US, often proclaimed as the greatest democratic nation in the world?
Yep. Maybe some people could take a look at Chinese society and take a few examples from them. No one said it had to be all or nothing. Red scare really did a number on our society and now we have a New Red Scare. As the Joker said, you get what you deserve. 🙂
Umm. Who is proclaiming the US as the greatest democratic nation in the world? A presidential speechwriter?
The country is all about money; just look at all of the billionaires who have lined up this year to declare that empathy is a bad human trait.
People in the tech industry estimate that building the same sort of manufacturing pipelines (design, parts, assembly (several stages), packaging) in the US as exists in Asia would take 10-15 years and cost $15-25 trillion.
A gamer technology channel did a deep dive on the topic, speaking to a variety pf manufacturing and retailing companies, if you have a few hours to spare it’s interesting and educational: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W_mSOS1Qts
Apple would be out of business within a month. It would cost them billions to build the necessary manufacturing plants and train (or import) skilled workers to run them. Unless Americans are willing and able to work for 2 dollars an hour like their well trained and extremely productive Asian competition, the cost of the products would be so high that they could not possibly compete on the market anymore.
Apple could always build their products elsewhere. Even the US.
It’s not in Apple’s or shareholders interests to do that. The United States needs to pass a law to force companies to manufacturer locally. These tariffs are whack-a-moles as Apple will just find another country.
We can’t make iphones because we lack the skills and infrastructure. We should be fast tracking the citizenship of graduating engineers and scientists instead of chasing them out of the country. We should also pay teachers more and support independent research.
If you study other industries the US once dominated but have now been outsourced, such as apparel, you will see an endless appetite for our companies to save pennies and exploit every trade loophole put in place to help. This is happening today with the entertainment industry too. Watch the credits and see for yourself.
Why? The guys who own these companies: the CEO, shareholders, investment funds, want more profits. Hey, us middle class guys want cheap products too as well as good returns on our meager 401k’s, so we also benefit. We don’t hate on Behringer because they sell inexpensive products. We just don’t like that they’re unoriginal about it.
President Rump’s daddy died from complications involved in dementia. Mr. Orange Crush is 78 and 3 neurologists have pointed to clear signs of it in his behavior. I’m just waiting for the day he loses it during a speech and starts cussing like a loony. A BIGGER one. Once he links Jesus and the c-word as he splutters, you can get ready for V.P. Couch Humper to take over. Good thing I’m not eaten up with excessive Religion or I’d be crapping old Ibanez guitar pedals over the End Times. No wonder I enjoy “The Punisher.” 😛
Apple could easily eat this cost if they wanted to, instead of passing it on to the consumer
stop worshipping them like they are your gods or something
“Apple could easily eat this cost if they wanted to, instead of passing it on to the consumer”
That’s not how capitalism works. If their costs go up by 20% because of tariffs, they’ll eventually pass that on to you.
And who are you responding to when you say “stop worshipping them like they are your gods or something”?
t sounds like you’ve got an axe to grind with Apple, when you should be smart enough to realize that Trump putting high tariffs on goods made in China, Taiwan, Vietnam, India, etc. raises prices on just about any electronic device you can buy.
I am a happy Linux user, but if i had to id use my sonoma hackintosh
+1
To be honest, I’m seriously thinking of going full Linux.
Not because of this, but because of Windows 11 being awful and MS constantly forcing Copilot etc.
How is it?
What DAW do you use?
Bitwig Studio works great natively on Linux. You can also copy over the binaries from Push 3 standalone to run Live natively on Linux as well though it’s not that easy but it works.
For Windows 11, do a fresh clean format/install with Windows 11 Education. It’s the version with the least BS. Use MAS scripts for activation. You also have more control over disabling other stuff.
You totally should, i get great results with Reaper and Bitwig
This was temporary to reach a deal, it has now been changed to 20%. You ran for the chance to poopoo Trump before waiting for the dust to even settle.
Enjoy paying 20% more and keep drinking that koolaid!
The rest of us understand that Trump is raising our taxes and making the US borrow 3.5 trillion dollars, all so he can give big tax breaks to billionaires.
Ok? The tariffs still exist and went up. We are going to pay more. How can you all be so brains washed into accepting that paying more is somehow ok?
There are no deals being negotiated. The US is unilaterally placing a blanket tax on products imported from certain countries. The administration then announces that the exporting countries are paying the tax, when the tax is actually charged directly to American companies (and consumers) when products arrive in the US. None of this makes sense.
Oh yeah, 5D chess, right? Enjoy the TACOS.
Now he’s threatened Japan with a threatening letter that’s so poorly written, his wife or one of his kids must have helped him.
Supporting Americans by buying expensive American-made products, such as pre-2023 Moog: No way!
Supporting Americans by paying expensive tariffs on top of cheap foreign-made products, such as Behringer: This is the way!
I doubt seriously that Synthhead voted for Trump.
The thing that makes Trumpian mayhem possible is the absolute pig ignorance of his cult followers. Five minutes on the Google machine could tell them who will be paying these tariffs. Hint: It’s them/us. But Trump counts on his minions being too stupid to grasp some basic facts, and too lazy to bother to learn anything. So he tells them China is paying trillions into the treasury, and that we are all going to be rich as a result. Stupid and lazy.
You know who is going to get rich? The people who are already rich. They laugh at how stupid the MAGA feral hog squad is. But thank the Lord that we don’t have a black lady in the White House eh? It was worth sure worth giving up what’s left of the social safety net for that!
But sure, let’s stick to music. Why did that one guy write “This machine kills fascists” on his guitar?
Trump should have to pay $5 million per breath for permission from the people of the USA to breathe on American soil.
Thanks very much to our orange-laquered, medicaid-killing, dementia-riddled, catheter-wearing, authoritarian leader.
I hope President Pigshit will chicken out of this one soon, too.
As I see it tariffs have a few purposes, increase tax revenue, encourage foreign countries to give US a better trade deal and encourage companies to manufacture goods in the US
High tariffs always result in inflation and economic stagnation, and that’s exactly what Trump’s tariffs are doing.
High tariffs raise the costs of American manufacturers, making it harder for them to compete and be profitable. This results in higher prices, economic slowdown and layoffs, all of which we’re already seeing in the US, compared to when Trump took office.
This is, of course, in addition to the tariffs directly raising the prices that you pay for things.
Most economists and historians think the US should only use tariffs when absolutely needed, because of the way that they tend to backfire and cause unintended consequences.
In this case, though, Trump is just using these tariffs to raise revenue, so he can give himself and his rich buddies a big handout. For a while, he tried to justify raising your taxes by saying it was to fight fentanyl. Now he doesn’t even bother with trying to justify why he’s raising our taxes.
But this is only one part of his plans. You vote TACO you have to accept it all. The overseas aid cuts and the devastation that causes. Easy for the Chinese to step in and claim another “friend”. The lack of proper healthcare in America that is going to get worse. The rich get richer, the wealth gap increases (trickle down? the gap shows it doesnt. Look how good life was ehen the gap was small) and the poor get poorer. This isnt meant to be the world in 2025. Is this really what we have been striving to get to?
I see this as a good thing…Maybe Americans will buy less crap they don’t need and stop digging themselves a giant debt hole…
apple has to worry about about how to not let the price of apple products skyrocket in their home country.
this is so absurd to watch
get the popcorn ready, everybody
The post is not correct; the tariffs were lowered from 40% to 20%.
I came here for the crazy Tim S rants, but I guess he has been hard blocked because they are nowhere to be found, lol
suffice to say, all arbitrary tariffs are bad, they will only hurt companies large and small, and as synthesizer enthusiasts (ie: musicians) this will affect us all. whether its an IC, knob, or an LED, every part comes from somewhere on earth, passes through MANY hands. companies have very small profit margins
Apple should move manufacturing to Russia. No chance of Krasnov ever imposing tariffs there.
And this after your dollar just collapsed erroding about 10% of your purchasing power. Americans are being impoverished and tehy are cheering for it lol.
Americans are like the frog in a pot that’s slowly warming up. We don’t realized how screwed we are already, because Trump’s chipping away at our rights little by little.
Your PC is probably made in the same facility as Apple products, using the same workers you allege to be “slave labour”
HP and Dell computers are manufactured by Foxconn, Compal, Wistron and Inventec in factories in multiple countries. Acer, Lenovo and Huawei manufacture in China and Taiwan.