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[Richard230]

Nothing good is going to come out of the current tariff war for electric motorcycles, especially with almost all battery cells, electronic components and most chassis components being sourced from Asia. I have a feeling that the supply of new motorcycles in the U.S. is going to be slim pickings for the next few years. Maybe LiveWire will sell a few, but I am not even sure about that. I doubt that Zero will be selling new bikes in the U.S. if they have to raise their prices even further due to tariffs on their bikes and parts. They might just limit sales to countries other than the U.S. until things finally calm down. But I just don't have a clue when that will be. Things seem to be going from bad to worse every day.   

Your best plan might be to just keep the bike that you have now and try to keep it running and in good shape for as long as you can.

[Specter]

There's saft a battery plant in georgia, and a few others i cant remember where..  they may not be totally dead and i read a story they are getting ready to open another one up real soon.

taiwan is still on good terms right /  plenty come from there too.

livewire has already stated more than once they really want to divest from the u s market and more on the indian market.

time will tell

aaron

[Richard230]

My thought regarding Zero is that they will continue to develop and engineer their new models at their HQ in Scotts Valley, CA, while assembling the bikes in the Philippians. Importing those bikes into the U.S. would make them too expensive to sell in the current U.S. market, even though imports from the Philippians would be charged a lower tariff tax than if the individual components were shipped here from China. Likely Zero will lay low here until thing settle down and (hopefully) blow over in a few years.

But long before that happens I bet that most Zero dealerships in the U.S. will drop the franchise due to lack of product and/or sales. 

[karlh]

While individual countries may have new tariffs below 25%, I believe imported motorcycles and motorcycle parts come under the across-the-board 25% tariff.

[Richard230]

While individual countries may have new tariffs below 25%, I believe imported motorcycles and motorcycle parts come under the across-the-board 25% tariff.

Frankly, I am so confused about the tariffs recently announced recently I have no idea if you or I am right. Or it could be both of us. Fully assembled motorcycles might be hit with a 25% tariffs, but their individual parts could be hit with a much larger tariff. I guess we will eventually find out when we go to a Zero showroom (if we can find one in the U.S.) and see the MSRP sticker, or order replacement parts directly from Zero to see if we get sticker shock. 

[TheRan]

I've not really been taking much notice of the whole tariff thing as it doesn't affect me, could someone give this foreigner a simple rundown? From the little I know it seems like Trump wants to punish foreign companies and keep people buying American, but it seems like it's just screwing over Americans. Even a lot of the American companies, they're getting components or even the entire product from abroad and the extra they have to pay just gets passed onto the customer, just like you guys are talking about. Trying to get by with products made solely in America simply isn't possible, same as many other countries unless it's one of those ones that makes it all for everyone else like China or Japan.

[Richard230]

I've not really been taking much notice of the whole tariff thing as it doesn't affect me, could someone give this foreigner a simple rundown? From the little I know it seems like Trump wants to punish foreign companies and keep people buying American, but it seems like it's just screwing over Americans. Even a lot of the American companies, they're getting components or even the entire product from abroad and the extra they have to pay just gets passed onto the customer, just like you guys are talking about. Trying to get by with products made solely in America simply isn't possible, same as many other countries unless it's one of those ones that makes it all for everyone else like China or Japan.

\

Trump says that he wants to make it so expensive for the American consumer, by placing large taxes on all products imported into the county, that consumers will stop buying them and U.S. companies will see an opportunity to manufacturer their own products here. As you say, that is pretty much impossible for a number of reasons. What some people believe is that Trump wants to return to the good old days in the 1800's when there was no income tax and the U.S. government was run using import taxes. That way he can cut (or maybe even eliminate) our national income tax, which would be a big benefit for the richest people in America. So the ones that really get screwed over are the people that are already struggling to pay their bills and have to buy a lot of their daily products from "Dollar Stores" - which sell mostly cheap Chinese food and other products.

[CagivaRider]

Taiwan has a 32% tariff.

[Richard230]

Taiwan has a 32% tariff.

They don't deserve it.  They have enough problems to deal with.

[TheRan]

I've not really been taking much notice of the whole tariff thing as it doesn't affect me, could someone give this foreigner a simple rundown? From the little I know it seems like Trump wants to punish foreign companies and keep people buying American, but it seems like it's just screwing over Americans. Even a lot of the American companies, they're getting components or even the entire product from abroad and the extra they have to pay just gets passed onto the customer, just like you guys are talking about. Trying to get by with products made solely in America simply isn't possible, same as many other countries unless it's one of those ones that makes it all for everyone else like China or Japan.

\

Trump says that he wants to make it so expensive for the American consumer, by placing large taxes on all products imported into the county, that consumers will stop buying them and U.S. companies will see an opportunity to manufacturer their own products here. As you say, that is pretty much impossible for a number of reasons. What some people believe is that Trump wants to return to the good old days in the 1800's when there was no income tax and the U.S. government was run using import taxes. That way he can cut (or maybe even eliminate) our national income tax, which would be a big benefit for the richest people in America. So the ones that really get screwed over are the people that are already struggling to pay their bills and have to buy a lot of their daily products from "Dollar Stores" - which sell mostly cheap Chinese food and other products.

It seems so contradictory, he doesn't want people buying foreign but he wants to make more money from people buying foreign. I really do feel bad for you yanks having to put up with a shithead like him, just thank god it's only (hopefully) for four years and then someone better can take over and try and fix things. It still blows my mind that he won, and that he was even allowed to run in the first place as a convicted felon awaiting sentencing.

[Curt]

It was really disappointing when Zero decided to move production from the local factory near Silicon Valley to the Philippines. That sort of thing is what the tariffs are meant to stop. But even if they were still made here, it wouldn't help because all the parts are foreign. And even if a country drops their tariffs and the US reciprocates, the 10% baseline would still sting. We either continue losing all production capability until we're totally dependent, or take painful steps to reverse course. But even if we reverse course, it'll take years, and a future administration will re-reverse course before it's done. The problem seems intractable.

[Richard230]

It was really disappointing when Zero decided to move production from the local factory near Silicon Valley to the Philippines. That sort of thing is what the tariffs are meant to stop. But even if they were still made here, it wouldn't help because all the parts are foreign. And even if a country drops their tariffs and the US reciprocates, the 10% baseline would still sting. We either continue losing all production capability until we're totally dependent, or take painful steps to reverse course. But even if we reverse course, it'll take years, and a future administration will re-reverse course before it's done. The problem seems intractable.

I won't argue with that. It pretty well sums up the situation as I see it, too.

[princec]

The other obvious side effect is that local US producers will simply raise their prices to be at parity with the increased price of foreign goods, because why wouldn't they? If the market will bear a 25% premium on something then the price will inflate to fill the vacuum. The key point being "inflation", which means rocketing costs of stuff.

ON THE OTHER HAND ... it's clearly a very long term gambit that will take a generation to play out: the reason goods from, say, China are so cheap, is because they have an extremely imbalanced cost of labour compared to domestic production. This difference was slowly growing larger and larger. Where the cost of goods manufactured domestically was already subjected to, say, 20% taxation which is taken as income tax from the workers producing the goods, if those goods come from abroad, then not only is the 20% not collected by the govt. at the point of production, the govt. is also competing with what is very likely a workforce paid peanuts and barely taxed anyway.

Uh, unfortunately, the generation that it will play out for is "us".

Cas

[princec]

For sure it's a nuclear sledgehammer to crack a nut, but I do understand some of the reasoning behind it. Global trade is all very well when everybody is using the same currency and has the same taxation and same living standards, but that's not the case, and it creates a desperately unlevel playing field where whoever stoops the lowest cleans up - which means China, with its famously terrible working conditions and pay.

And not entirely unrelatedly there is the looming issue of national security at a time when the world has become dangerously unstable thanks to the shenanigans of Russia, Israel, and to a lesser extent, China. Can you really rely on China to make, well, everything, if they're not 100% allies?

So... I see some strands of strategy amongst all the bullshit and fuckwittery and random belligerence... even though I have personally just lost 20% of my entire lifes' savings in the last week. (F*CK!!!!) Everything is entirely beyond my control though so all I can do is sit back and watch my fortunes get destroyed while the rich carry on getting more richerer.

Cas

[Richard230]

While you might find most U.S. workers willing to assemble electric motorcycles indoors from Chinese parts here, good luck finding any U.S. teenager willing to work in the agriculture or home construction industries - unless they can do so bossing other workers around.   (I have a granddaughter that would be good doing that, if you could pry her away from social media.  )