Grand Pianos

Retaliations, tariff exemptions and the board of trade

Early this week I published a piece for FT Alphaville looking at which European sectors are vulnerable to Chinese trade retaliation.

To identify these vulnerable sectors, I relied on the slightly unhelpful (from a European perspective) US lists of sensitive products in Austria, France, Spain and Italy, compiled when the US was threatening to tariff these countries if they dared introduce a digital services tax.

As per the FT piece, the general approach to making these sorts of lists is to be as evil and unfair as possible:

In terms of what to target: beyond the obvious (EU-linked carmakers), the general rule of thumb is that countries try to hit companies that care at least a bit about sales in their market, are politically influential at home, and will be furious about being dragged into a tit-for-tat that has absolutely nothing to do with them. I would note that producing these lists of targets is, by all accounts, one of the most fun government trade jobs a person can have.

And while looking through the various lists, one product stood out: grand pianos from Austria.

First, I didn’t realise that Austria even made grand pianos. Or rather, it is not something I had ever thought about.

Second, they do indeed seem to be quite good at it. From Wikipedia:

Bösendorfer Kuhn pianos come with 10 Swarovski leaded-glass crystals inserted along the steel structure. The million-dollar Kuhn has 72 crystals installed under the strings.

The rim of a Bösendorfer grand piano is built quite differently from that of all other grands. Instead of veneers bent around a form, the rim is made in solid sections of spruce and jointed together. Spruce is better at transmitting sound than reflecting it. This is perhaps why Bösendorfers tend to have a more delicate treble and a bass that features the fundamental tone more than the higher harmonics.^[9] There are also two other features of Bösendorfers that are shared with only a few other piano brands: one is a removable capo d'astro bar in the treble, which facilitates rebuilding of the instrument and, Bösendorfer says, provides greater acoustic separation from the plate, decreasing tonal absorption; the other is single-stringing, providing each string its own individual hitch pin on the plate instead of connecting it to a neighbouring string. This design may slightly improve tuning stability and is an advantage in case of string breakage

Finally, here is the year-on-year value of grand piano exports from Austria, displayed in chart form not because the numbers are particularly astonishing but rather because the chart itself looks like a piano keyboard.

Source: Author’s calculations, UN Comtrade data

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Biden tariffs, again

In last week’s newsletter, I wrote a bit about the new Biden China tariffs and how they are largely performative. This is because the US — due to existing tariffs and restrictions — largely doesn’t import very much of any of the products targeted from China, including EVs.

Since then I stumbled upon this illustrative chart by Ryan Featherston, which emphasises that point nicely: