China-targeted tariffs forcing US manufacturers to relocate abroad

Businesses whose stateside production depends on components from China decry costs they bear due to Trump-era policy continued by Biden administration

Washington’s exclusion policy shielding some products also slammed in run-up to process review by Office of US Trade Representative

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Published: 11:00pm, 18 Aug 2023Updated: 11:49pm, 18 Aug 2023

When Dan Digre, president of Misco, an American designer and manufacturer of audio speakers, delivered a keynote address in June at an industry gathering in Orlando, Florida, he minced no words decrying the impact of Washington’s import duties on Chinese goods.

Tariffs were discouraging US-based speaker companies from making their products in the United States, undermining “the current administration’s policy to build more in America”, Digre told the sympathetic audience.

A small family-owned business established in 1949 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Misco stayed put when other manufacturers left the country chasing cheaper labour and lower costs in China.

But after surviving and thriving in a highly competitive environment, Misco struggled to keep up and moved some of its operations to China. Now, it is struggling to keep the rest in the US.

Speakers are used widely: in guitars, commercial airlines, military applications and medical equipment.

The initial decision to stay in the US was based on a belief that speakers were a core technology meant to be made in America, but now Misco was at a competitive disadvantage because “companies who make speakers in America pay three times the tariffs of those who make entirely in China”, Digre told the Post.