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Comment by Jun8 | Hacker News Reader

The article talks about violin shoulder rests manufactured in Canada. Maybe I’m not understanding the details but I think that this particular product is a bad example to showcase the damage of tariffs:

(1) This sounds like a product that can’t be easily interchanged with competitors’ offerings since Chinese competitors offer “crude imitations”, at least for now

(2) From a Google search I see that the price of this product is in the range $25-250. It’s hard to see violins students who plunk down hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars for their instrument try to save tens of $s for a subpar shoulder rest. Unless perhaps it breaks weekly or something.

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I believe this story is supposed to bring a more human/relatable element to the impacts of the tariffs and trade war, using a unique family-owned business that happens to make a violin widget.

Focusing on cheaper Chinese competitors and how student violinists might approach a cost/benefit analysis for the widget seems to miss the spirit of the article (at least, as I understood it).

Anecdotally every beginner violin student (and most players) I know use specifically Kun made shoulder rests. Instrument rental companies (where I'm from students rent instruments either through their school or a company, often run by a private teacher) generally include these with the cost of the instrument. The exceptions are generally not people using another brand but musicians not using the rest at all, many professionals will use just a cloth. Kun rests also rarely break, if ever, there aren't really any forces that would stress them.

I wouldn't be surprised if they had started to be supplanted by cheap Chinese or other import brands, but I haven't seen it.

> It’s hard to see violins students who plunk down hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars for their instrument try to save tens of $s for a subpar shoulder rest.

Grade school violin students almost never purchase an instrument; they rent, at surprisingly low annual cost.

It is surprisingly profitable, given that those violins are cheap and many people forget to return it in a timely fashion.

Our third grader just started viola this school year and I was amazed at how cheap the rental was! I was expecting to get raked over the coals monthly, but it was just a little over $100 for the entire year. The chin rest was one thing we didn’t have to pay for, the schools have the younger kids use a big foam sponge attached with a rubber band.

I'm not allowed to say "you're missing the point" because it's against HN rules, but maybe don't focus on this particular item so much?

It illustrates the dynamics of strictures on global trade with a simple item that has several inputs and that China is the most likely to win out in these sorts of situations because of their low cost advantage.

Cars or something are probably a better example but there are so many complicating factors that would make it less illustrative.

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