The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bikers divided Trump/Harley-davidson war
STURGIS, S.D. — Gary Rathbun rumbled in to Sout h Dakota to attend the United States’ pre-eminent gathering of motorcycle enthusiasts atop his Harley-Davidson, a 2009 Ult ra Classic that brought him 800 miles from Idaho. It is the 40th Harley he has owned. It is also likely to be his last.
Like many of Harley’s most loyal customers, Rathbun was enraged by the company’s announcement this summer that, because of the Trump administration’s trade fifight , it would begin manufacturing the bikes it sells in Europe outside the United States.
His anger echoed that of President Donald Trump, whose public denouncement of Harley’s decision has put one of the count r y’s most iconic brands in the uncomfortable posi ti on of clashing with a president who is immensely popular with most of its customers.
“I’m riding my last Harley,” said Rathbun, 67, a retired truck driver whose bike rally essentials included a steel knife nestled in his belt, a saddle bag stuffed with a Ruger pistol and a small bottle of Jack Daniel’s cinnamon whiskey. “It was American-made, and that’s why we stood behind them.”
Harley took a public relations risk to protect its bottom line when it said it would skirt European Union tariffffffffffffs aimed directly at the industry in retaliation for Trump’s steel and aluminum levies. Rather than eat the cost of the tariffffffffffffs or raise prices on the bikes it sells in Europe by $2,200, the company said it would move some production overseas.
In a warning to other companies that might follow suit, Trump described Harley’s decision as an act of corporate treason, declaring in a Twitter post in June: “If they move, watch, it will be the beginning of the end — they surrendered, they quit!”
He again crit ic ized Harl ey ’s d ec i s i o n in a T w i tter post Sunday: “Many @harleydavidson owners plan to boycott th e company if manufacturing moves overseas. Great! Most other companies are coming in our direction, including Harley competitors.”
Most of the hundreds of thousa nd s of motorcycle enthusiasts who converged earlier this month upon the Black Hills of South Dakota developed a relationship with their Harleys well before Trump became president. Still, as leather-clad baby boomers revved engines, drank beer and swayed to classic rock ballads, Trump’s inflfluence was palpable.
Like Trump, Gary Panapinto, 63, a machinist from Illinois, had doubts about Harley’s true intentions, believing that the company was planning to move the bulk of its bike production offshore, and, like Trump has intimated, he suggested that Americans would be forced to buy a product that was made overseas. While Trump has fanned that perception, Harley has said it will shift production only for bikes it sells in Europe and that American bikes will still be made in the United States.
“They need to keep them here in the United States, espec i ally if they ’re going to sell them here,” Panapinto said. “I think Trump is just trying to protect jobs in the U.S.”
Oliver Lapointe, a retiree from New Hampshire who rides cheaper Japanese bikes, said he used to aspire to own a Harley but could never afffffffffffford one. Now he thinks they are not worth it because they are fifilled with foreign-made parts and, he said, increasingly made overse as. Like several Trump administration offifficials, he accused the company of using the tariffffffffffffs to justify a decision that it already had in mind.
“They’re always advertising that they’re made in America, so I don’t think they should do it,” Lapointe, 70, said. “They’re greedy.”
The company declined to comment, but it pointed to a July interview in which its chief executive, Matthew Levatich, defended the decision. He denied that he wanted to shift its manufacturing, noting that it would not take up to 18 months to execute the plan if it were in the cards all along.
“We’ve worked very hard to be apolitical in how we approach our business and our consumers everywhere in the world,” he said. “We have to do what we have to do based on the facts and circumstances before us, and we’re doing that.”
Some hard-core Trump supporters said they understood the economic rationale behind Harley’s decision. Few complex machines are fully sourced and assembled in the United Stat es these days, and even the riders who are devoted to the ideal of a fully American-made product said they understood that companies must compete globally.
Bikers have been among th e groups most loyal to Trump, as motorcyclists in the United States tend to be predominantly working-class men older than 50 and veterans — demographics that comprise the bulk of the president’s base. Trump has embraced that allegiance, saying recently that “I guarantee you everybody that ever boug ht a Harley-Davidson voted for Trump.”
On Aug. 11, Trump invited hundreds of bikers from the New Jersey Bikers for Trump chapter to visit him on vacation in Bedminster, New Jersey. He praised them as “people who truly love our Country.”
Some who are generally pleased with Trum p said he was wrong to bully the motorcycle maker merely for trying to make a profifit, but they remained loyal to him nonetheless.
“You’ve got to take it with a grain of salt. He’s hot one day and he’s cold the next,” Bill Sc haner, an electrical supply salesman from North Dakota who has owned seven Harleys, said of the pres- ident. “If they’re going to make bikes in Europe and sell them in Europe, let them go. We’ll take the bikes made in America.”
At a souvenir stand selling Trump memorabilia offff the main drag in Sturgis, Larry Rich said that, as a businessman, Trump should underst and that Harley is doing what it can to stay profifitable.
“I don’t like everything he says, but I don’t like everything my wife says,” said Rich, 72, who used to ride Indians — another U.S. brand, made by Polaris — before giving up the hobby.
For his par t, Trump has been good for business. Rich was busy selling shirts printed with an image of the president blazing past the White House on a Harley-Davidson with Stormy Daniels, the pornographic fifilm actress who claims to have had an affair with Trump, falling offff the back. The tryst that Daniels — whose real name is Stephanie Clifffffffffffford — says took place in 2006 has not turned offff customers.
“Well, he was a Democrat back then,” Rich said with a smile.
Veterans of the Sturgis bike rally, which is in its 78th year, said the hardships facing Harley-Davidson go beyond Trump’s tough words and stem from years of declining ridership in the United States.
Leslye Beaver, owner of th e Beaver Bar in Stur gi s and several other biker bars across the country, says Harley and other U.S. motorcycle manufacturers are at a crossroads because their prod- ucts have lacked appeal to young people in the United States. She pointed out that t h e t rad e d i sp u te s h ave increased their raw material costs and hindered their ability to export to Europe, which is a growth market.
“I think they’re doing what they have to do to stay in the game,” Beaver, who lives in Georgia and supports Trump, said while patrolling the parking lot of her bar in a golf cart. “It’s human for people to be mad because Harley is so American, but I think they want to be here.”
For years, Harley-Davidson’s sales in the United States have been steadily declining as the Milwaukee-based company grappled with an aging population, a vibrant secondary market and the changing tastes of consumers. Recently, it has focused on marketing it s motorcycles to women, selling branded clothing and boosting international sales as a way to grow profifits.
T h e ave r a ge c o s t o f a Harley is about $20,000, and they top out at about $ 40,000, making the motorcycles a luxury item for people who do not use them as their primary mode of transportation. In 2017, the company’s U.S. retail sales fell for the th ird consecutive year to 147,972 motorcycles, while sales in international markets have been climbing slowly or holding steady, with more room to grow. In the past fifive years, Harley’s stock price has fallen nearly 25 percent, even as the stock market has been on a tear.