Well.... here we are. It happened. We now have a tariff war and I happen to know a number of parts in the Raven come from Canada. Others are European so let’s hope the USA doesn’t get into a tariff war with Poland or Belgium. There are some American parts too..... Like everything else, the Raven contains parts from all over the world, but it is built in the USA.
I was hoping Trump was using tariffs as a negotiating tactic, but it appears that very unfortunately he’s gonna implement them. Much like the recent government spending freeze that may have been well intended but not at all thought through and ultimately having to be rescinded, this tariff thing will have significant ripple effects not only in the audio industry but across our economy and not to our benefit, especially if you were hoping for prices to decline from here. Financial capital, like water, flows to the area of least resistance and forcing it to flow here through tariffs will have significant ramifications. As just one example, there are very sound economic reasons why many cars are manufactured in Mexico rather than here or in Europe. Trump appears to be looking back to the era of President McKinley’s use of tariffs but seems to fail to realize that this is a far more globally-oriented economic world than it was back then, so while their goals may have been similar and well-meaning in fostering US business interests the unanticipated and far-reaching negative consequences of employing broad-based tariffs today will be considerable and very painful especially to us as consumers. Please know I’m not saying these things from a political perspective at all but as a finance person and purely from an economic perspective. What Don has said above will ripple through countless other industries and products we buy here, and I sincerely hope this tariff thing gets reconsidered and/or renegotiated before it does some real and considerable damage to both our economy and our personal bank accounts.
