It’s a tough time to be a horn player in America, now that the Trump administration is proposing to declare trumpets, tubas, trombones and French horns “national security threats.”
The notice issued last week by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security said the administration wants to add “brass-wind musical instruments and their parts and accessories” to a list of imports subject to Section 232 national security tariffs.
The notice claims that using imported metals to make instruments might reduce demand for American-made materials and lead to fewer critical supplies in a national emergency.
If approved, any imported brass instruments and parts could face a tariff of 25%, according to Opera Wire.
John Mlynczak, president and CEO of the National Association of Music Merchants, said in a statement last week that “there is absolutely no national security risk with musical instruments, and in fact, the opposite is true. Music making has been one of the most culturally uniting activities for thousands of years.”
Bryan Riley, director of the free trade initiative at the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, admitted to Reason that it wasn’t “immediately clear why trumpets threaten to impair U.S. security.”
He wondered, “Is the Pentagon concerned that our adversaries plan to drop them on us from planes?”
The tariffs do pose a financial security threat to musicians, merchants and manufacturers.
A 2025 study from the Peterson Institute for International Economics showed that tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act caused wind instrument imports to decline by 27%.
The study suggests that while sales for high-end instruments remain steady despite added tariffs, the entry-level market for budding student musicians will take a tumble.
HuffPost reached out to the White House for a statement, but no one immediately responded.
However, horn players like Ed Croft, a saxophonist and leader of the Hep-Tights, a San Diego-based R&B group, say the proposed tariffs are forcing them to adapt.
“It will simply increase the price of new saxophones, which are already too expensive, and all are manufactured overseas like France, Japan and Taiwan,” Croft told HuffPost.
He said musicians who play other brass instruments like trumpets or trombones are luckier since there are reputable manufacturers “still in the US such as Bach, Getzen, Shires and Schilke.”
But Croft also suggests a slightly cheaper alternative.
“I have always bought used horns, never new, as they were always too expensive,” Croft said. “Any good repair person can make it play like new. If one really needs to buy new, I would wait until this ridiculousness of tariffs ends.”