The US has very little brass (the metal) foundry capacity anymore. 2 years ago one of the largest brass producers in the US, Lee Brass in Alabama, closed it doors. It was a family business founded in 1917 but was sold to private equity Fidelis Holdings LLC (THeir motto??? "Integrity, Methods, Results"). The new owners closed the foundry overnight, stiffed many employees on their last paycheck, and sent all production to china. The kicker guess who was one of the largest customer, US Department of Defense... specifically the Navy surface and Sub fleets. The owners told the DoD that they didn't care about military production they could make more profit by closing US operations.
How do I know the details???... my friend bought 75% of their assets for pennies on the dollar at auction. He was the only one at the auction bidding above scrap value for the equipment. Everyone else came in with the current scrap value of copper and steel and based their bids based on the weight of each piece of equipment. He is currently setting up a new foundry on President's Island outside of Memphis with significant investment from the US Navy. I have been helping him as a consultant and was down there for the first 2,000 lb bronze melt. Here is some information https://www.icmrl.net/smart-manufacutring-tn-oh... Even this is not going to be enough to meet US Navy needs...
There are a lot of problems with the brass/broze/copper industry int he US. West Philadelphia Bronze is a major supplier of valves for the Navy. Currently they are unable to make parts that they have been producing for over 100 years without difficulty. Suddenly their recipes don't work.. Why??? because their process relied on deeply held institutional knowledge passed from foreman down to apprentice... and that knowledge has been lost by attrition from an aging workforce and not brining in new people years ago when it was necessary. Now you only have 60 year olds and 20 year olds in the place. Currently for one particular valve needed by the Navy they have over a 50% initial scrap rate... of the remaining half 80% need manual grinding and weld rework. 20 years ago the scrap rate was less than 10%. It is bad enough that I was at a meeting with some of the Navy's top scientists and the Admiral in charge of a specific nuclear sub program of record to figure out a way to get scrapped valves repaired for short term use and into the hands of Newport News Shipyards because a sub was delayed going back into service by over 6 month.
In 2022 the Department of Defense reported that Domestic supply of Metal Castings and Forgings are one of the top 4 National Security Vulnerabilities in the US. AHEAD of the Military need for microelectronics and batteries.. Second to Hypersonic Weapons.
This is the backdrop for all of this.... Whether a tariff on Brass Instruments is going to help or hurt the situation.. dunno. I am personally opposed to it because it is such a small drop in the bucket compared to the actual root causes.. To put it into perspective Brass Instruments represent roughly 0.05% to 0.1% (or about 1 in every 1,000 to 2,000 tons)—of the total copper, brass, and bronze products produced or imported into the US each year. Consumer goods as a whole is only 10%.. the rest is construction, industrial equipment, medical, etc. So much more bang for the buck than instruments and parts.

Thank-you this is much more helpful than the fear and loathing b.s. daisy chain prompted by the OP.

Statistics: Posted by dp — Wed Aug 12, 2026 10:39 pm

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