SHADOWS FALL frontman Brian Fair has blasted the Trump administration over the sweeping tariffs that have been placed on trillions of dollars’ worth of goods that are imported into the United States and the effect the tariffs will have on the instrument market.Fair, who works for St. Louis Music — one of the largest general distributors of musical instruments and accessories in North America — took to his Threads account earlier this week to write: “I work for a company that owns a variety of instruments brands: guitars, percussion, orchestral strings, brass, woodwinds etc. our landing costs have sky rocketed and those costs are being turned into higher prices that will be unfortunately be handed down to the consumers.”We have tried to avoid increases where ever possible but a lot of it is unavoidable,” he continued. “Some of these brands used to be made in the US but that priced them entirely out of the market so production shifted to overseas many years ago.”I work directly with Main St. brick and mortar music stores, some that are barely scraping by. These increases, no matter how small, will make it even more difficult for these stores to survive.”I am by no means an expert on international trade but I am seeing the damage caused by these tariffs first hand and this is just the beginning,” Fair added. “Hope there is still a market left once the dust clears.”Also, the idea that domestic or other manufacturers that are NOT affected by tariffs won’t raise their prices to match the market have not paid attention to history. We saw prices increased by those unaffected as soon as they were announced and as we see with inflation, once prices go up they do not come down for any reason. The market resets, everyone jumps on board to maximize profits regardless of their costs and keeps it moving.”According to Billboard, top guitar brands like Fender, Martin, Taylor and more create many of their moderately priced products in Mexico. In addition, popular drum kit manufacturers like PDP, Yamaha and Pearl all list instruments made in China on their sites.While China is the largest manufacturing hub for products worldwide, there is also a lot of instrument manufacturing in Mexico, U.S., Canada and Indonesia, as well as in Europe.Because of Trump’s announcement of sweeping new tariffs on U.S. imports earlier this week, stocks tumbled for a second straight day today. This has raised concerns among investors stashing away money in retirement funds like 401(k)s.Since Trump was sworn into office for his second term in January, the U.S. stock market has seen $9.6 trillion in value erased, according to data from FactSet and Dow Jones Market Data. Of those losses, $5 trillion has been erased just over the past two days — the largest two-day loss on record.On Thursday (April 3),stocks recorded their biggest one-day drop since 2020, with more than $2 trillion in investor wealth erased from the S&P 500. The Dow and S&P 500 each sank more than 4% yesterday, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq plunged nearly 6%. View on Threads View on Threads View on Threads