A stated purpose of the new tariffs is to encourage U.S. manufacturing, so it is possible more of that will happen in our industry and some companies will start or increase domestic manufacturing or assembly operations. However, there are still a lot of hurdles to domestic manufacturing if tariffs on inputs are high, interest rates remain high and capital costs more, and U.S. labor is expensive and in short supply. These barriers were addressed in legislation last year,
H.R. 8625 (the Domestic Bicycle Production Act), which unfortunately did not advance. Re-building assembly and component manufacturing domestically is a big undertaking and would take government support to accomplish at any sort of realistic scale. On a positive note, PeopleForBikes currently has a group of members talking about how to make that happen, and it’s encouraging to work in an industry where companies can set competitive instincts aside and work together for the good of all.