Julie Robbins and her team at EarthQuaker Devices have made guitar pedals for some of the biggest names in the world of music. The Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, PJ Harvey and others have sought out the company’s bespoke, handmade pedals for their unique sounds and designs. Its most popular model, Plumes, has sold over 67,000 devices.

Their made-from-scratch effects petals use more than 1,000 components, many which are imported directly from countries such as China and Vietnam or are bought from companies that bring them in from overseas.

But almost a year into the Trump administration’s tariffs regime, business for the company, headquartered in Akron, Ohio, is not looking good.

“The tariffs are adding up to 30% to our costs. I would have at least a couple of new positions open now if it weren’t for the tariffs,” says Robbins.

So far, the company has eaten 100% of that extra cost, but now that’s no longer financially feasible.

“The tariffs are of no benefit to manufacturing in America. The stated goals of the tariffs were to reshore manufacturing, negotiate better trade terms and raise money for the US treasury. It’s just not possible to do all those things simultaneously,” she says.

“It feels like gaslighting.”

The region incorporating Cleveland, Youngstown and Akron was once regarded as the backbone of US industrial activity in a state with the third largest manufacturing output in the country after California and Texas.

But Donald Trump’s tariffs, meant to bring manufacturing jobs and companies that left for lower cost countries beginning in the 1960s, back to the US, is having a significant effect on these communities. For a region that lost half its population during the latter 20th century and in recent years has been fighting to revive its manufacturing and industrial industries, the tariffs represent a major bump in the road for communities that now find themselves shedding thousands of jobs a year and at a rate far higher than other midwestern states.

A recently released report has found that one-in-three manufacturing companies in northeast Ohio have reported being affected by tariff costs and that their tariff-related losses, at 16%, are nearly double that of any related gains of 9%.

“Northeast Ohio producers are often reliant on inputs that are simply not being produced in vast quantities within the US, even with tariffs in place to advantage domestic producers, and likely will not be unless the price for which the inputs sell increases substantially to make domestic production feasible,” says Jonathan Ernest, an assistant professor of economics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Akron, a post-industrial city that’s lost 100,000 residents since the heady days of American manufacturing in the 1960s, is once again facing the prospect of economic decline and layoffs. In August, a major manufacturing employer announced it’s closing two molding plants due to poor earnings.

Across the region, manufacturers are downsizing, eliminating jobs and pausing operations due to economic uncertainty and rising expenses fueled by tariff policies.

Having lost 2m factory jobs across the Rust belt in the 12 years before 2011, the region over the last decade has doubled down on manufacturing, according to reports.

Moreover, the basis for the tariffs is to bring back manufacturing to the US, but a report published by the Manufacturing Advocacy and Growth Network (Magnet) found that only 9% have brought back more production from overseas this year. It also found that efforts to innovate in northeastern Ohio have been scaled back due to the wider economic uncertainty created by tariffs, specifically that: “With limited bandwidth and shrinking budgets, smaller firms are deferring nonessential projects like R&D and product launches to stay stable in the short term.”

Ernest says he doesn’t expect a sharp rebound or reshoring in the short term.

“First, the long lead-time means that any substantial growth in the manufacturing sector – building new plants, facilities [or] foundries – would take years to be planned, funded, approved, built, and then finally operated,” he says.

“The other reason is that while manufacturing employment has decreased in the US, manufacturing output has continued to rise.”

Some companies are looking to employ tariff workarounds such as foreign trade zones, which allow companies and importers to defer duty payments on products coming from overseas.

“We’ve had a busy year with foreign trade zone activations and have several more in process,” says David Gutheil, chief operating officer at the port of Cleveland, which has recorded a fall of 15-20% in cargo this year compared to 2024. That’s been attributed to tariffs.

“Most of our general cargo is non-containerized, high-grade steel imported from various locations in northern and central Europe.”

He says that importers moving goods through the port are reporting tariff stress.

Still, not all companies say they are struggling, while others are hanging on to the hope that the tariffs may eventually bear fruit. According to the above-mentioned Magnet report, two-thirds of manufacturers surveyed say they see their businesses growing in 2026.

Still, for small businesses, the tariffs have hit particularly hard.

While some of the 35 staffers at EarthQuaker Devices painstakingly turn bare circuit boards into exquisite guitar pedals, others have been taken away from their regular duties to format profit and loss Excel sheets in an attempt to forecast the fallout of a seemingly ever-changing wave of tariff rates and to set product sales prices.

“There’s no support for small businesses right now. Partly because of DOGE, partly because of Project 2025,” says Robbins, referring to the Heritage Foundation think tank’s controversial roadmap the Trump administration has sought to enact across a swathe of US policies and politics.

She notes that a $50,000 grant the company received several years ago from the state of Ohio that was dependent on EarthQuaker Devices hiring more staffers is now being recalled due to economic forces that are in part attributable to tariffs.

“The only reason we do this is to have jobs. It’s not cheaper or easier than doing anything else,” says Robbins.

“We don’t want to make anything else; we have dedicated our lives to perfecting this craft.”