WASHINGTON − The sine wave on David Levi’s T-shirt illustrates the physics behind the STEM kits he creates to teach kids how to build electronic musical instruments from scratch.
But the oscillating line could also represent President Donald Trump’s tariffs that have bounced up and down, creating higher costs and uncertainty for small businessmen like Levi.
Levi, an electrical engineer who founded MicroKits in 2020, has had to raise prices, slow production and pause plans to launch a new product – Banan-a-Synth – that lets kids turn a bunch of bananas into a kind of keyboard.
And if the tariffs that Trump has imposed on nearly every imported good – including many of the electronic components Levi uses to build his kits in Charlottesville, Virginia, − are going to remain high for the foreseeable future, Levi said he might have to move production out of the country.
That could be needed both to allow Levi to sell his kits at a competitive price and to gain more predictability about costs. Trump is setting rates by bypassing laws that require a more detailed process for imposing tariffs in limited circumstances.
