He either has the crappiest research staff or he just doesn't care ! 

tennyson wrote:

So his promise to keep Harley from paying the tax is already kept ! 

In his speech and promise to repeal the tax Trump said "They weren't even asking for a change" 

NOW we know WHY !  (or as Paul Harvey used to say "Here is the REST OF THE STORY") 


http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/01/news/india/trump-harley-davidson-tariff/index.html?iid=hp-stack-dom
 

So let me tell you the Rest of the Rest of the story and explain why in this case, I side with Trump here....

I worked for Harley at the York plant from 2002-2009. The early years in my time there were extremely good times for the company and they really wanted to expand their international presence. But in trying to sell motorcycles in certain markets, they were hampered by unreasonable tariffs and regulations.

In India there was absolutely a 100% tariff on imported bikes.

In Brazil, there was a 35% tariff. You know what we used to do with bikes heading to Brazil? We'd build them in York or Kansas City. We'd roll test them to make sure everything worked, and then we'd take the bike apart, ship it to Brazil, and then put it back together. Because if you did that, the tariff didn't apply. 

In China, there were regulations that didn't allow most people to buy a "heavyweight motorcycle" (too many vehicles already on Chinese city streets and they didn't want to increase noise pollution beyond what it already was.) In that case, Harley did something interesting. They provided a Chinese motorcycle maker some training on manufacturing efficiency and perhaps some bits of H-D intellectual property to help get them off the ground in exchange for some relief on tariffs.

All that said, the bottom line is that Harley never wanted to open an Indian manufacturing facility. They much rather would have had all of their motorcycles made in the U.S. with an American workforce. But unfair trade laws on the Indian side made it impossible to competitive in the Indian marketplace.

So in this case, I agree with Trump when he says we need to push for fairer trade laws. I'll caveat this by saying that I'm talking about the heavyweight motorcycle industry and I don't want to paint a broad stroke that lumps that industry in with every other industry. 

In some cases, companies go off-shore because it just makes sense. In others, they are forced to. I'm for evening things up so if you want to stay in America, you can without onerous trade laws from getting in the way.
 

All that said, the bottom line is that Harley never wanted to open an Indian manufacturing facility. They much rather would have had all of their motorcycles made in the U.S. with an American workforce. But unfair trade laws on the Indian side made it impossible to competitive in the Indian marketplace.  -  Lager Lad

Thanks for haring that information Lager.  When I initially read the story, my first inclination was that they probably built the plant in India in order to avoid the 100% tariff, and that is correct.

CT, of course Harley had a choice on whether or not to build in India or the USA, but if they built them in the USA they would be at a significant disadvantage to any other company who built in India and would do little to no business.  If their competitors are building in India and can sell their bikes for half of what Harley would have to charge if they built in the USA, they wouldn't do much, if any business in India.  So if they wanted to sell bikes in India, they needed to build the plant in India

So, it appears that the tariff was already history?