Five things President Trump obviously doesn’t know about the U.S. motorcycle industry

When have we ever seen a time when a sitting president, acting with all the decorum of a 16-year-old boy whose prom date proposal was rejected, has actually tweeted a threat to help a competing foreign company against a century-old American company?

President Donald Trump is escalating his Twitter attacks on Harley-Davidson.

The answer, of course, is never before. But that’s what Donald Trump has done in his escalating and increasingly petty attacks on Harley-Davidson.

As I wrote last week, Harley-Davidson announced it will move some motorcycle production outside the United States to avoid new European Union tariffs on U.S.-made motorcycles. Those EU tariffs are a response to Trump’s tariffs on EU steel and aluminum. Harley-Davidson estimated the entire tariff mess will cost the company $90 million to $100 million a year.

Trump responded in a series of threatening tweets last week, and today added this one:

Now that Harley-Davidson is moving part of its operation out of the U.S., my Administration is working with other Motor Cycle companies who want to move into the U.S. Harley customers are not happy with their move – sales are down 7% in 2017. The U.S. is where the Action is!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 3, 2018

Now I have limited sympathy for Harley-Davidson, as many of the company’s problems are of their own making. Still, this is an astounding attack on an American company by a president who claims to make America great and protect U.S. jobs.

Almost as astounding is how many errors can be crammed into one short tweet. It’s clear that Trump knows next to nothing about the U.S. motorcycle industry in general (including how to spell “motorcycle”) or Harley-Davidson’s business specifically. Based on this tweet, here are five things Donald Trump clearly doesn’t know about the U.S. motorcycle industry:

1. This is nothing new. Harley-Davidson moved part of its production outside the United States years ago. It has plants in Brazil, India and Thailand. Motorcycles built there supply other countries. Motorcycles sold in the United States are assembled in the United States (though many of the parts are imported). None of that changes with Harley’s recent announcement.
2. No large-scale motorcycle manufacturer that is not already in the U.S. market wants to come into the U.S. market. Every mass-production motorcycle company in the world that builds products that compete directly with Harley-Davidson is already doing business in the United States. I suspect the companies Trump’s administration are supposedly talking to about coming to the United States are figments of the president’s imagination.
3. Other companies (with the possible exception of Indian) do not really want Harley-Davidson’s customers. At least not their “core customers,” as Harley defines them, which are Baby Boomer white males. Most of us (I fit the demographic, even if I don’t currently own a Harley-Davidson) are aging out of riding. We’re only going to buy so many more motorcycles in our lifetimes, which is why Harley has made such a huge effort in recent years to go after women and minority customers.
4. Harley-Davidson’s sales down 7 percent in 2017 can’t possibly be due to customers being upset about tariffs imposed and responses taken in 2018. But if you’re Donald Trump, you just state what you want to believe and bully anyone who points out your factual errors.
5. “The U.S. is where the Action [sic] is!” Not in motorcycles. U.S. motorcycle sales are stagnant overall. More motorcycles are sold in a month in Indonesia than in a year in the United States. The middle class in India may be a smaller percentage of their population, but it’s bigger than the U.S. middle class. And they actually buy motorcycles, not SUVs. Harley-Davidson has focused on trying to increase sales abroad to keep its ship afloat precisely because the action in the United States is weak and not getting better.

As I wrote in my previous piece, it’s not like we don’t know all this about Trump: his lack of intellectual curiosity and respect for the truth. His willingness just to make up stuff on the fly. The way he takes everything personally and immediately goes into attack mode when questioned or crossed. He’s done all that on far more important topics.

But I’m writing about it here because this is a motorcycle blog and the motorcycle industry is what I know. Unlike the president.