What are you thinking, CYCLING RELATED, on tariff subject

[Mark McM]

Originally Posted by prototoast

I believe if you buy a Giant bicycle with Sram components, everything will be made in Taiwan.

Giant owns manufacturing facilities in China.

[bigbill]

The numbers being thrown out on tariffs are a shot across the bow meant to bring the players to the table to negotiate. Tariffs on bike parts including frames, forks, and wheels are likely not on the radar compared to EVs, solar components, and electronics. If China introduced a $20k EV to compete against American made EVs, a tariff makes it less competitive. China has a history of introducing cheap (in price) products to capture a market, drive out competition, and then control the market. Without tariffs, they could do this.

For bike parts, China already sells cheap cycling components, and some of them like BTLOS are very good with great customer service. You can buy entire groups that look and work like srimagnolo. With the shrinking number of brick and mortar bike shops, we're ordering more stuff on line and when it comes down to it, there are some good deals on Amazon. Most of my online purchases are from BTD and Universal, but I also have a set of BTLOS wheels that are very nice.

[deluz]

I am no expert in economics which is an incredibly complex subject.
Often it is a matter of stating the obvious which is what happened in the past rather what what might happen in the future.
Even the experts get future predictions wildly wrong.
Trying to be apolitical let's look back at the 2018 financial crisis, was it predictable and preventable? Here is what I found:

None of this had to happen. The Great Recession was a man-made storm.
A special, bi-partisan government panel found the meltdown was avoidable.
“The crisis was the result of human action and inaction, not of Mother Nature or computer models gone haywire,” the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission said.
The commission found that the captains of finance and the regulators who were supposed to be watching the store ignored warnings and failed to ask questions and understand the risky investments they were selling or overseeing.



Nobody went to jail despite the carnage. This led to a period of QE which fueled stock buy backs both benefiting the wealthy more than the poor and middle class. Then Covid hit and the US government spent trillions of dollars on stimulus programs causing inflation to increase.
Now we have somebody who is promising they are going to institute tariffs, mass deportations of working illegals, mass firings of government employees,
reduce income taxes and reduce regulation. One thing I don't hear much about is the growing deficit and impending insolvency of Social Security. We know this is all very unpredictable as far as how much of it will actually happen and what effects it might have. One thing for sure it will be an interesting 4 years.