Moog, the legendary synthesizer designer and manufacturer based in North Carolina, is the latest American company to sound an alarm over increased operation costs.
The next round of tariffs on Chinese products are scheduled to kick in on Friday on about $34 billion worth of goods imported from China. In return, China said it will impose tariffs on $34 billion worth of U.S. products.
As a result, Moog has urged customers to contact North Carolina’s Republican lawmakers Reps. Mark Meadows and Patrick McHenry, and Sens. Richard Burr and Thom Tillis, in an email to its customers. The company warned that the tariffs “will immediately and drastically increase the cost of building our instruments, and have the very real potential of forcing us to lay off workers and could (in a worst case scenario) require us to move some, if not all, of our manufacturing overseas.”
The company came up with a template letter to North Carolina’s officials that it is asking customers to sign and send. In the template letter, Moog explains that it tries to make its circuit boards with U.S. suppliers when possible, sometimes paying up to 30 percent more than what it would cost to buy the same circuit boards overseas. Yet, even when Moog buys from domestic suppliers, most of the raw components still come from China. That’s why Moog is warning it can’t avoid “this substantial cost increase.”
None of the four lawmakers responded to a request for comment on Moog’s letter. Moog says it’s not commenting further.