The chaotic promotion of President Donald Trump's tariffs last week shocked the nerves of companies in almost every industry in the United States and around the world, and a small business owner in the San Francisco Bay Area tried to figure out whether he could solve his own way through a loophole.
Eric Mueller of punk rock record label Pirates Press wondered if he could classify his company's records—including colored vinyl releases from bands like Rancid, Slackers and Cock Sparrer as “information material.” Doing so will allow records to force imports from overseas without incurring tariffs under lesser-known laws.
Mueller hopes to find anything to be assured. “The fluctuations are crazy,” he said. “In the past few days, we've had dozens of goods leaving and we're trying to figure out we should charge people!”
The Trump administration’s instability and changing approach to tariffs is playing the general chaos throughout the record industry. Manufacturers and brokers, Mom-'-'-Pop, while others recognize that any additional fees incurred by the tariff will eventually be transferred to the consumer. Even as of now, Trump's growth has increased by 10%, comprehensive tariffs could have a significant impact in industries that have already had negative impacts on already under inflation and rising costs. Recent industry estimates suggest that the proposed tariffs could increase costs by 24% and result in more production being phased out. Mueller estimates that the new vinyl record retails at $30-40, up from $15 to $25 a few years ago.
“Looking at math: people aren't making that much money,” he said. “The industry is definitely backing down. Factory is struggling. If the cost of recording goes up, that's not a good thing. It won't help anyone.”
However, the industry’s potential, exceptions to preserving labels come from the Berman Amendment, which exempts “informational materials” such as books, movies, tapes, CDs and other media containing First Amendment protected materials, regardless of their country of origin. The amendment, passed by Congress in 1988 and written by Democratic Representative Howard Berman, was one of the earliest obstacles for U.S. lawmakers to try to ban Tiktok. Washington The post title called it “an obscure obstacle.”
“The purpose of this exemption is to ensure there is still free information,” Mueller explained.
Representatives of the Recording Industry Association, a trade organization representing the American music industry, tentatively confirmed that the “current understanding” is that the import of records is excluded from Trump's tariffs.
This is good news for the record industry. Although the growth of local manufacturing over the past decade has been due to the revival of vinyl records themselves, many albums in the record store have been made abroad. Czech-based conglomerate GZ Media is the world's largest record press, raising about 70 million records per year. All of these records can be imported in the United States under the current Berman Amendment without the impact of large-scale tariffs. But that doesn't mean that the U.S. vinyl industry is not outside the woods. (A spokesperson for GZ declined to speak with Wired, saying the company “decided not to comment on topics related to politics or tariffs.”)
