Moog Music Downsizing Continues with Layoffs in Asheville
Asheville, NC based Moog Music continues to downsize, reports the Citizen-Times, three months after the company was acquired by InMusic.
The newspaper says that Moog has eliminated “possibly more than half the existing jobs, including most of the production positions.
While there’s been no official word on the layoffs, our understanding is that manufacturing for most Moog products based on modern designs is being eliminated in Asheville and moved overseas. InMusic had previously eliminated job functions at Moog that can be handled by the parent company.
“Tariffs Are Seriously Harmful To American Businesses Like Moog”
In 2018, Moog warned that tariffs instituted as part of the Trump administration’s trade war with China would raise prices and could lead to jobs being moved overseas:
“These 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,” adding, “Tariffs are seriously harmful to American businesses like Moog.”
The tariffs added a 25% import tax on Chinese components used in synth manufacturing, but not on the import of complete synths. This meant that companies that manufacture in the U.S. have to pay a lot more for parts companies than that move their manufacturing overseas.
The Biden administration has left most of these trade tariffs in place.
Moog’s predictions have been borne out in the last five years. The company raised prices notably in 2022, saying at the time “The ongoing global challenges of material shortages, supply chain limitations, inflation, as well as rising raw goods and shipping costs, have made it necessary to adjust some of our pricing. And now, InMusic appears to be moving the bulk of Moog’s manufacturing overseas.
