The trade war’s hidden victims: Beginner musicians and school music budgets

This holiday season, aspiring musicians may be priced out before they ever unwrap their first instrument—courtesy of US tariff policy. With eight months of trade data to assess, the effects of the Trump administration’s tariff policies—and the general economic uncertainty they have created—are coming into focus. For the musical instrument industry, the effects have been more or less what one would expect in a tariff-battered, high-inequality economy: The entry-level instruments that beginners and school music programs depend on have taken the biggest hit, even as global demand for higher-end US-made instruments remains relatively stable.

Over the long term, this is how the music dies: when trade policy chokes off the supply of beginner-grade instruments, impoverishing not just budget-conscious aspiring music makers but also reducing demand for higher-end, US-made instruments.

The figure shows year-over-year changes (2024 vs. 2025) in US musical instrument trade from January to August, highlighting a clear split between weakening imports and relatively stable exports. Overall imports of instruments and parts are down 9 percent, with sharp declines in student- and school-oriented categories such as pianos (HS 9201, -20.3 percent), violins and cellos (HS 9202, -10.8 percent), wind instruments (HS 9205, -27 percent), and percussion (HS 9206, -11.3 percent). Exports, by contrast, are only 1.8 percent lower overall. The one major import outlier is electric instruments (HS 9207, +2.6 percent), suggesting resilient demand for guitars, synths, and other creator-economy gear even as other segments soften. The data point to three dynamics shaping the market in 2025.

School Music Staples Are Down Big

In December 2024, I warned US tariff policy could have terrible consequences for US musical instrument imports, especially for the budget-friendly beginner instruments often manufactured in places like China, Indonesia, and Vietnam and on which school music programs depend. That’s exactly what is happening.

The largest import contractions have come in student-heavy categories like wind instruments (-27 percent), pianos (-20.3 percent), percussion (-11.3 percent), and strings (-10.8 percent).[1]

Exports of pianos and strings are down as well, so this may be a sign of overall softening demand: Piano sales have been declining for years. But non-trade-based assessments suggest the overall growth outlook for orchestral strings is relatively strong. The gaps between US imports and exports of wind instruments (-27 percent vs. -2.8 percent) and percussion instruments (-11.3 percent vs. -1.5 percent) suggest a significant contraction in the student-grade market.

Demand for High-End Products Is Stable

Moody’s Analytics recently reported that the top 10 percent of income earners now account for 50 percent of US consumer spending, a trend that is echoed in many advanced and middle-income economies. If this is the case, we would expect demand for high-end instruments—where US products are highly competitive—to be less affected than budget-friendly ones. That, too, is the case. US exports are now down only 1.8 percent year-over-year, whereas imports are down 9 percent.

On the surface, this would appear to be good news for US producers and a potential sign that tariff policy is working by harming imports more than exports. But tariffs help domestic producers only when the imported goods compete with theirs—and in musical instruments, they largely don’t.

Broadly speaking, US musical instrument exports are high-end, professional-grade instruments, while US imports are dominated by beginner- and mid-grade instruments. Hence, most made-in-USA instruments do not compete directly with imports; domestic production and imports serve different segments of the market. Unlike in the typical argument for tariffs protecting domestic producers from competition, in the case of musical instruments most of these forgone imports are a deadweight loss with no benefit to the producer, the importer, or the player. If a school district, beginner musician, or family cannot afford a foreign-made beginner horn, violin, or guitar, they don’t “trade up” to a US substitute—they simply don’t buy at all, or delay purchase.

Second, most of the iconic US brands in musical instruments—Conn Selmer, Fender, Gibson, Ludwig, and Zildjian—manufacture globally and import beginner- and mid-grade instruments to the US market.[2] To the extent those segments of the market are contracting due to tariffs and general economic uncertainty, they are hurting US firms as well.

Third, US instrument manufacturers produce high-end instruments. But consumers are only ever in a position to buy those high-end products if they pick up an instrument in the first place. And not many kids or school music program directors are going to gravitate to the French horn if the cheapest model on offer is $4,900 Ohio-made horn versus a $600 made-in-China model. So, to the extent tariffs are hitting student-grade instruments, they are eating the seed corn of the US musical instrument market.

The Big Picture

The combined import-export pattern—imports down more than exports—is what one would expect if middle-income consumers and school music programs were pulling back, rather than any supply-side challenges. Demand for budget-sensitive imports is down while demand for higher-cost domestic products is more stable, which is absolutely consistent with signs of collapsing demand among all but the highest-income households.

The one category experiencing growth—electric instruments and synthesizers—reinforces this point in subtle ways. Consumers are shifting demand toward the market segments where individual consumers rather than institutional purchasers dominate, and nontariffed digital services can massively expand the user’s sonic capabilities. Few schools have electric guitar programs, so individual purchasers dominate and tend to be, somewhat paradoxically, less price sensitive.[3] Regarding digital instruments, why buy a Steinway Model D Concert Grand Piano (~$230,000) when one can buy a $400 keyboard and use it to trigger samples ($49) expertly recorded from the same instrument?

Most musical journeys don’t begin seated in a concert hall before a Steinway or with an artist replica model of Les Paul. They begin in a school music room or with a modestly priced starter instrument. And many of the United States’ most iconic musicians—Dolly Parton, Notorious B.I.G., Kurt Cobain—come from humble beginnings. As US trade policy starves the beginners of today, it starves demand for premium US instruments in the future—and keeps instruments out of the hands of the Dollys of tomorrow, the kids whose musical spark might have been lit by a starter instrument unwrapped this time of year.

Notes

1. Wind-up music boxes and accordions are also down sharply, but they are a tiny category (1.3 percent of imports). Maybe the carnival business is being hit hard as well.

2. For example, one can buy a version of the iconic Fender Stratocaster made in Indonesia, China, Mexico, Japan, or the United States.

3. I can speak from personal experience. There were times in my life I had no money to eat but plenty of money to replace a cracked crash cymbal. Musicians are a strange bunch this way, in part because we tend to think of our instruments less as tools and more as extensions of ourselves. Seriously—ask any musician about their relationship with their favorite instrument.