That piece had little to do with Harley and a lot to do with Trump. Harley has had off shore production for many years. I'm sure at some point Trump will counter with some tariffs on some orange and red bikes in the near future and we can expect more crying from the left?
Just out of curiosity, what are the import tariffs India has in place(largest motorcycle market in the world)?
I have mixed emotions about this. While I believe it to be a good business decision, I hate seeing us lose manufacturing. On the other hard, I don't like when we win, only because of subsidies, or big bro stacking the deck. In any case, I like that they aren't going to pass on the new $2200 cost to the customer.. rather try to find a solution that works for them.
Nothing new there and the article is BS. HD has had manufacturing outside of the US for a long long time to save money on tariffs as well as shipping and the like.
Yeah, I know it's not new news. Interesting it made the DetNews. Send it to the Dungeon though. It's likely a biased article aimed at fulfilling agendas. Seems most news is, nowadays.
There once was a 49.4% tariff on imports of large displacement motorcycles to protect Harley-Davidson. I do not know if it was extended or if it is still in force. https://www.nytimes.com/1983/04/02/business/us-raises-tariff-for-motorcycles.html https://object.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa032.pdf
If you took all the foreign made parts off a Hardley you wouldn't be able to start it. Been that way for many years. Which makes the Made in America snobbishness more hysterical.
Agree. Not: This is not meant to be a political statement. HD advertises Merica FTW, blah blah but for a company that has that as one of their core selling points they have a shocking amount (not really but probably would be to a lot of folks outside the industry) of offshore content. That’s the reality of being competitive in this global economy and HD didn’t stream line enough product fast enough and you see it now. You cannot hold that many models and variants of models in inventory and survive with that little says and that little cash on hand.
sure, they've had facilities offshore for years. however, they're shifting production of motorcycles bound for the EU to those facilities from US facilities as a direct response to changes in the US. That's new. That's a considerable longterm commitment to increasing production in offshore facilities at the expense of US facilities. Moreover, they're absorbing $40-45million for the rest of this year and $90-100million/year thereafter (which may or may not get passed on to the customer in those years). https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/25/har...not-raise-prices-to-cover-eu-tariff-cost.html
I get that is the excuse they're using. But you don't have plans like this in place in the short amount of time since the EU got pissy. And it is supposedly as a direct response to the EU changes, not the US.
I'd agree that Harley has been trending toward increased offshore production for awhile in an effort to increase penetration into new markets to make up for dwindling US sales.