It will be interesting to see how these poorly thought out steel tariffs and trade wars with allies impact RE prices/sales projections in the US. Large Chinese companies somehow still seem to get “waivers”.....
I presume you're not talking about those Hyosungs I mentioned, since they're Korean. Offhand, I don't know of
any Chinese made bikes making any noticeable inroads yet into the American market, apart from maybe Kymco scooters, which one sees from time to time, but they're Taiwanese (though some are now made on the mainland--politics be damned). Still, I've little doubt the Chinese will be coming to a showroom near you sooner or later.
Full disclosure: though a bit on the quirky side, my vehicular tastes are undemanding enough (Hell, I still miss my old '83 Chevette, which practically qualified as an Amish vehicle) that I could really go for one of those little
Churchill Customs adventure travel jobs being cobbled together by some Western expats in China on the basis of some Chinese 125 or 250cc econo-bike like a Hung Far Lo or whatever that probably moves more units every year in their home market than Harley likely sells in a decade or three. Churchill just takes the brand new ones, tears 'em down, upgrades their shabbiest and ugliest bits, tarts them up a little, slaps on a tank decal, and presto! A reliable and reasonably robust light flickable little beast that'll propel you troublefree from one end of that potholed country to the next--up drainage ditches, rutted mountain paths, wherever. Check out that addictive YouTube channel
ADVChina for a looksee at them in action.
If the Chinese makers ever bore of foisting halfass disposable but dirt cheap small capacity rides on their huge and captive home market, and get that hit-or-miss feckless quality control thing in hand, then even the Japanese makers will be in big trouble. My hunch is the assault will likely commence with commuter eBikes, of which they already make millions each year. With environmental controls being lax to non-existent, apart from the occasional show trial of some stooge or other who maybe didn't adequately caress the balls of the appropriate Party Bozo, they are free to really trim those production costs by turning their landscape into a big dioxin pit with mercury croutons. For all that marketing ecobabble about clean this and zero emissions that, batteries are actually a filthy business with longterm consequences typically shirked off by the manufacturers. They kick that can down the road
HARD. Those Chinese manufacturers are happy to punt it right into their neighbor's front yard.
As for tariffs and whatnot playing a significant role in the matter of foreseeable Chinese motorcycle manufacturing dominance, apart from the aforementioned minimal to near non-existent costs to their manufacturers of environmental standards compliance, the
real fix is in in those shipping costs. The PRC makes damned sure these are as next to nothing as might be an accounting error, both domestically and internationally. This explains why I have a USB and 12 volt ciggy lighter port on my Enfield, which was delivered to me from faroff Shenzhen for only $6--less than it would cost me just to mail the damned thing to Cleveland. Don't get me wrong. Noone is a bigger fan of needful ultra-cheapo Chinese crap than I, but that whole rigged practically-free ePacket Chinese shipping thing simply cannot bode well for my neighbor trying to sell his or her crap whilst dragging that unsupported shipping costs anchor around. I expect it's WAY more relevant to the outcome of the bigger macrogame than any Trumpian Monkey Theater about this or that tariff on a specific product or sector. The whole topic of this rigged Chinese shipping scam and your...Yes,
YOUR...financial support of it, like it or not, came up in another sailing forum I subscribe to in a thread about how to turn a cheapo Chinese transceiver into a Marine FM and NOAA Weather Radio all for less than $30.
Details right here.
Topic: H-D news (Read 4161 times)