Posted on 06/26/2018 6:42:31 AM PDT by Poison Pill
All age groups are moving away from all motorcycles. HD is just the biggest American manufacturer so it suffers the most.
Any motorcycle maker beyond niche manufacturers needs to focus on the prime market for motorcycles, Asia.
This has nothing to do with tariffs or Pres. Trump.
If it loses its export market then Harley-Davidson is dead anyway. It sells roughly 40% of its bikes overseas. Cut that off and they're gone within a year or two.
Harley Davidson: junk engineering wrapped in pretty paint and shiney chrome.
Cut off their export market and the foreign company will be buying what's left of Harley from the bankruptcy court.
He’s talking about importing bikes made overseas back into the USA. Not ones built overseas and sold overseas.
“Times change.” And so do demographics. Talked with a HD rep, was told the new generation is not buying bikes. Told me HD is bringing out an electric bike next year.
Hot rod builders/owners all have grey hair. It’d dying.
“People in Asia. There’s a big market for motorcycles there”
But they buy for its transportation value, not it’s value as a work of art (which I think they are).
"In the early eighties, Harley-Davidson claimed that Japanese manufacturers were importing motorcycles into the US in such volume as to harm or threaten to harm domestic producers. After an investigation by the U.S. International Trade Commission, President Reagan in 1983 imposed a 45 percent tariff on imported bikes with engine capacities greater than 700 cc."
If you wanted a globalist you shouild have voted for the Queen Bitch of Chappaqua.
I have a hard time beliving a $5.5 Billion corporation is moving production to another country over what everyone agrees will be a short lived skirmish over tariffs.
Harley will have to invest $100 million for a new plant and by the time it is built and selling bikes, this skirmish will be long over.
Does Harley expect this to go on for more than 2 years?
No. It is a contrived excuse when they could simply give a sound business reason for such a move.
We’re taxes an issue when they opened manufacturing in India and Brazil in recent years and is opening another in Thailand this year?
They are full Shiite. ..
Bikes built in Europe are meant for European markets. Bikes built in India and Thailand are meant for Asian customers. Bikes built in Brazil are for South American customers. Their domestic sales are built here.
There could be 6 years left in the Trump administration. Besides, cut off Harley's overseas sales and they're dead in considerably less than 2 years.
OK, comrade
This decision was made months ago. In the long run American companies will be better if there are no tariffs.
Tattoo parlors hit hardest.
HD is dead.
They couldn’t manage to make a profit when they have a high demand for an expensive product.
That’s dead.
Totally incompetent management.
Harley has been screwing up for years. This is just another stupid move by Harley.
It's like Seinfeld, the reruns are more popular than the new episodes.
HD has been outsourcing everything for years.
“You do realize HD has manufacturing plants in Australia, Brazil, India, and Thailand?”
Which they should for those markets.
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