Four U.S. senators urged the Bush administration on Tuesday to raise pressure on China to open its market to U.S. motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson Inc, which has struggled with sluggish sales this year.
"The Chinese market should be a hog heaven for U.S. motorcycle companies, but China's unfair trade practices are slamming the brakes on Harley sales," Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in a statement ahead of high-level U.S.-China talks next week in Beijing.
"Fair trade must be a two-way street," said Sen. Robert Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat. "China's roadblock to Harley- Davidson is unacceptable. There will always be a demand for a classic like Harley-Davidson motorcycles, but artificial barriers are threatening U.S. jobs."
Fellow Democratic Sens. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin and Claire McCaskill of Missouri joined Schumer and Casey in urging U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez to press China on municipal regulations that limit or even ban heavy-duty motorcycle use in urban areas.
Harley-Davidson has been in China for two years, but has made almost no sales because of those rules, the senators said.
The iconic American motorcycle manufacturer contributes to employment in each of the four senators' states.
The company employs 8,500 workers in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Missouri and supports another 1,300 tire manufacturing jobs at the Goodyear Dunlop tire plant in Buffalo, New York.
In October, the company said its third-quarter earnings fell more than 15 percent from last year because of sluggish sales.
Chief executive Jim Ziemer said the company had to cut production because of the difficult U.S. business environment.
Opening the Chinese market to Harley-Davidson motorcycles "would create growth opportunities and help secure American jobs," the senators said.
First off, I will admit that I have not researched this issue. For all I know, there is a concerted effort on behalf of the Chinese government to keep American heavy motorcycles out of the market to protect local industry. It's possible.
However, do these municipal regulations prohibiting motorcycles sound crazy to you? With the traffic here and the pollution problems, those ordinances seem quite smart, actually. What's more, they encourage sales of cleaner vehicles (from a UC Berkeley transport paper):
The Chinese electric bike market has expanded more rapidly than any other mode in the last five to seven years, from nearly zero produced in 1998 to over 10 million in 2005. The annual production of electric bikes is shown in Figure 2. This tremendous growth has occurred in most Chinese cities, but particularly in large cities where motorcycle use is prohibited or heavily regulated, such as Shanghai.
Doesn't sound nefarious to me. Maybe I'm just not cynical enough. (Nah, it's not humanly possible to be any more cynical than I already am.)
But Harley can't sell in China, damn it. Must be someone's fault! We're entitled to huge sales growth!!!
They have also complained that the roads here are unsafe and that the import taxes are too high. I seem to recall that China's tariff schedule and phase-out timeline was negotiated quite thoroughly a few years ago. Hard to remember why, but I think it was right before, uh, what was that thing that happened? Right around 2000 – oh yeah, WTO accession. I think that might have been a good opportunity to address that issue.
Unsafe roads? So the big tough guys on their "hogs" need pristine roads, huh? Pansies . . .
I'm not a big fan of Chuck Schumer because of the whole RMB penalty tariff bill, but this is a new low in sucking up to a US company.
Crap, who am I kidding? This is par for the course. Note that all four of these Senators are Democrats, the so-called environmentally-friendly party. If they had their way, I'd be sucking up even more carbon monoxide on my way to work every morning.