More than 3,000 fake Gibson electric guitars were seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Southern California in what authorities are calling the largest seizure of counterfeit musical instruments at the busiest container port in North America.

If they were authentic Gibson guitars, the instruments — which were destined for the e-commerce market — would be worth an estimated $18 million, according to U.S. Customs. They were seized by federal officials at the Los Angeles/Long Beach Seaport, a sprawling coastal complex that includes the Port of LA. The massive West Coast port is the busiest in the U.S. among container ports, in the volume of shipments seen, with cargo worth an estimated $292 billion passing through in 2023. 

While the knockoffs seized by federal authorities were manufactured outside the country, all authentic Gibson guitars are hand-crafted and made in the U.S., said Beth Heidt, chief marketing officer at the company. 

The iconic guitar brand, founded in 1902 in Kalamazoo, Mich., has all its instruments made at facilities in Nashville, Tenn. and Boseman, Mont. — with several generations of artisans behind the more than 100-year-old company, she said.

“This is really emotional and personal for us because our teams have generations who have dedicated their entire lives to making these instruments,” Heidt said, describing Gibson’s guitar-making as a craft passed down generations within American families. 

Among the seized guitars were imitations of designs such as the Gibson SG and Les Paul, and while the majority were Gibson knockoffs, some were counterfeits of other well-known brands like Fender, Heidt said. She said there were models worth about $2,500 each if they were authentic as well as imitations of higher value Gibsons that would typically retail for more than $10,000. 

Federal authorities would not release any details about suspects in the investigation or where the instruments came from.

U.S. Customs officers worked with Gibson’s intellectual property experts to determine whether the guitars were counterfeits, according to LA County Sheriff’s Lt. Bill Kitchin, who oversees the department’s piracy division. 

Violating the federal statute that protects U.S. consumers from counterfeit products can result in a fine of up to $250,000 and 10 years in prison, said Jaime Ruiz, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. 

Africa Bell, director of the LA-Long Beach Seaport, said the record-breaking seizure was especially noteworthy since the port is the largest container port in the country — collecting $19 billion in import duties, taxes and fees during the last fiscal year. She said finding counterfeits and contraband “in this massive amount of cargo arriving here everyday is like trying to find the smallest of needles in the largest of haystacks.”

Heidt said seasoned guitar players would be able to easily tell the difference between the fake Gibsons that were seized and the brand’s authentic instruments, from the sound to other elements visible to the trained eye.

“We can pick it up immediately and tell,” she said, describing flaws in the fakes such as in the finishing, a more “flimsy” and light feel, placement of the logo, misplaced inlays and flaws in where the neck of the guitar meets the rest of the body. 

Andrea Bates, an attorney for the company who protects its intellectual property rights in court, said the well-known brand only sells through its website and authorized retailers which are listed on the site. 

Over the past fiscal year, Bell said, more than $2 billion in counterfeit products have been seized at the Southern California port.

John Pasciucco, U.S. Customs’ deputy special agent in charge for Los Angeles, said the selling of counterfeit goods can not only violate intellectual property rights and undermine respected brands that play by the rules, but also put consumers at risk. They can be made with substandard, even dangerous materials posing health risks — while also potentially being made through forced labor.

Products made with paint containing lead, potentially dangerous counterfeit medications and knockoff brand cosmetics bearing that can cause severe skin reactions are just a few examples given by federal authorities of such potentially harmful counterfeits.

President-elect Donald Trump, an avowed fan of tariffs, is pledging to enact stiff import duties as soon as he’s inaugurated in January. For Trump, these new levies would both supercharge the trade policies pursued during his first administration and, more broadly, help the U.S. achieve key economic and social goals. 

On his Truth Social site Monday evening, Trump unveiled plans to place a 25% tariff on all imports from Mexico and Canada on January 20, his inauguration day. The president-elect also said he intends to levy an additional 10% fee on all imports from China. 

Trump’s penchant for protectionist trade policies is a source of concern for many economists and Wall Street analysts, who worry new tariffs and retaliatory measures by U.S. trade partners could slow economic growth, spur inflation and trigger a trade war.

But Trump and his allies, including his choice for Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, have argued that tariffs deployed during his first term didn’t boost inflation and that the upside could far outweigh any negatives. 

“But tariffs are two things if you look at it,” Trump said in October in an interview with Bloomberg News editor-in-chief John Micklethwait. “No. 1 is for protection of the companies that we have here, and the new companies that will move in because we’re going to have thousands of companies coming into this country.”

Here are four ways Trump says tariffs will help with the U.S., along with what experts say.

Protect U.S. manufacturing

Trump believes that imposing tariffs on trading partners will help protect U.S. businesses at a time when domestic manufacturing jobs have fallen far from their peak in 1979. 

In some instances, the tariffs that Trump imposed in 2018-19 achieved that goal, with the Brookings Institution noting there’s some evidence that jobs in specific industries may have received a boost. For instance, tariffs on imported washing machines may have created 1,800 new U.S. jobs at Whirlpool and other manufacturers, according to the centrist think tank.

But that ignores the broader impact of Trump’s first-term tariffs on U.S. manufacturing, with the Federal Reserve finding that U.S. manufacturers ended up facing higher costs for raw materials they imported, as well as from retaliatory tariffs from other nations. The number of U.S. manufacturing jobs fell slightly during Trump’s first term, from about 12.4 million to 12.2 million workers, although a range of factors could account for that decline. 

“[O]ur results suggest that the tariffs have not boosted manufacturing employment or output, even as they increased producer prices,” the Fed researchers noted. 

Bring new companies to the U.S.

Trump also contends that broad-based tariffs will convince some foreign manufacturers to open plants in the U.S. as a way to avoid the import duties. 

“The higher the tariff, the more likely it is that the company will come into the United States and build a factory in the United States, so it doesn’t have to pay the tariff,” Trump told Bloomberg’s Micklethwait. 

Although such a shift is possible, Micklethwait said such changes would “take many, many years.” (Trump disputed that, saying companies would “come right away.”) Experts note that many factors beyond tariffs affect where companies decide to operate, including supply chains, taxes, shipping costs, and labor and regulatory policies.

Already, some businesses are anticipating the impact of tariffs by shifting their manufacturing locations, but that may not be guaranteed to benefit the U.S. For instance, shoemaker Steve Madden said if Trump places new tariffs on Chinese imports, it will shift manufacturing away from China and toward nations such as Cambodia and Vietnam. 

Deliver billions in new federal revenue

Trump has also touted tariffs as a way to generate new federal revenue that can offset his proposed tax cuts. During his first administration, his tariffs — more limited than his current proposals — generated $80 billion in revenue, according to the Tax Foundation. 

If Trump institutes a 10% tariff on all imports, as he proposed during his campaign, the federal government would reap $2 trillion from 2025 through 2034, estimates the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, a think tank focused on tax issues.

According to Goldman Sachs, a 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico, along with a 10% tax on Chinese imports, would generate just under $300 billion in tariff revenue per year. Overall, 43% of U.S. imports come from Mexico (15.4%), Canada (13.6%),and China (13.9%).

However, that revenue would largely be paid by U.S. consumers and businesses, experts say. That’s because tariffs are not paid by the countries that export to the U.S., as Trump maintains, but rather by U.S. importers.

In other words, companies like Walmart would be faced with the decision of whether to swallow the higher costs of imports, or passing those on to consumers, Vicky Redwood, senior economic adviser for Capital Economics, wrote in a research note. 

“If the costs are passed on, then customers face a choice: continue buying the (now more expensive) import or switch to buying a domestic alternative (which will cost more than the import pre-tariff),” she noted. 

Trump’s tariffs could cost the typical U.S. family an additional $2,600 a year due to importers and manufacturers passing the cost of tariffs to consumers, according to an August analysis from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a nonpartisan think tank focused on economic issues.

Stem the flow of drugs and illegal immigration

Trump also sees the threat of new tariffs as a way to curb illegal immigration and drug smuggling, citing people “pouring through Mexico and Canada, bringing Crime and Drugs at levels never seen before.” The tariffs would remain “until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” he added. 

Much of the fentanyl within the U.S. is smuggled from Mexico. During President Joe Biden’s term, border seizures of the drug rose sharply, with U.S. officials tallying about 21,900 pounds (12,247 kilograms) of fentanyl seized in the 2024 government budget year, versus 2,545 pounds (1,154 kilograms) in 2019, when Trump was president.

While it’s possible that Canada, Mexico and China could increase enforcement against drug smuggling or immigration to avoid Trump’s tariffs, it’s unclear whether such a threat along would achieve those goals. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Tuesday suggested Mexico could retaliate with tariffs of its own and described illegal drugs as a U.S. problem, while indicating a willingness to discuss the issues with Trump. 

The flow of drugs into the U.S. “is a problem of public health and consumption in your country’s society,” she said. 

Best Buy CEO Corie Barry said Tuesday that personal electronics could become more expensive if President-elect Donald Trump carries out his threat to slap new tariffs on foreign goods, as large retailers scramble to assess the potential impact of the proposed levies on their business. 

The warning came one day after Trump said he would impose a new round of tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China on his first day in office. Before the Nov. 5 election, he had proposed a baseline 10% tariff on all U.S. imports and a 60% tariff on goods shipped from China, arguing the such levies protect domestic manufacturers and encourage American companies to create jobs at home. 

Any added costs on U.S. imports from the three counties “will be shared by our customers,” Barry told investors in the company’s Nov. 26 earnings call, noting that “there’s very little in [the] consumer electronics space that is not imported.”

“These are goods that people need, and higher prices are not helpful,” she added.

Price hikes are not guaranteed, Barry cautioned, saying that any impact on the retailer’s costs and prices are contingent on how any new tariffs might be implemented. 

“I think it’s going to be a very fluid situation as we continue to work through it,” she said, adding that the company will “make sure we do everything we can to keep prices right for our customers.”

Best Buy could try to partly offset the impact of new tariffs by importing more goods ahead of levies taking effect in 2025, as well as working with vendors to source products from countries other than China, Barry said during the call. Roughly 60% of the goods Best Buy sells are imported from China. 

“We are already planning for and working with our vendor partners on next steps,” she said. 

Barry’s comments are echoed by other retailers and manufacturers bracing for the impact of higher tariffs on their supply chains. The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) has warned that Trump’s proposed tariffs could lead to higher prices for smartphones, laptops and tablets, connected devices, video game consoles, and computer accessories. 

Ed Brzytwa, the CTA’s vice president of international trade, said a number of the trade group’s members are “front-loading 2025 imports into 2024 to get out ahead of the tariffs.” 

As far as possible price hikes for consumers, “A number of people are waking up now to the fact that this could be a reality,” he said.