Reagan was truly brilliant.
Harley Davison was failing due to competition from Japan. What he did was imposed a tariff on Japanese bikes over 1100cc. Rather than pay the tariff Japan simply started building bikes here and it wasn’t long before they decided to build all of their made for America bikes here. Americans preferred the big Harleys which were now competitively priced so Japan concentrated on their smaller bikes.
Smoot-Hawley. Tariffs are stupid.
HD had a lot more problems than japanese competition. They were still building 40s tech bikes. They did come out with the vastly improved EVO design. But the japanese were actively dumping in the USA. Dumping was the justification for tariffs as I recall. No company can survive foreign companies dumping for long regardless of how competitive their products are.
HD had a lot more problems than japanese competition. They were still building 40s tech bikes. They did come out with the vastly improved EVO design. But the japanese were actively dumping in the USA. Dumping was the justification for tariffs as I recall. No company can survive foreign companies dumping for long regardless of how competitive their products are.