Et Tu, Harley? A Factory Is Headed For Thailand

Harley-Davidson, long considered a stalwart of American nuts-and-bolts manufacturing, is setting up an assembly plant in Bangkok. The Wisconsin-based company has been a poster-child for America-first economics, and this move at the minimum has bad optics. The company blames the extraordinarily high tariff that Thailand puts on U.S.-made motorcycles – 60 percent – and a Harley sales manager insists this is “not about taking jobs out of the United States.” All the bikes made in Thailand will be sold in Asia, the company says, and they will be lower-end units assembled from parts kits shipped from the United States. Nonetheless, this move gives President Trump’s critics plenty of ammunition: U.S. membership in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, scuttled by Trump, would have lowered those big tariffs and made it easier to sell U.S.-made motorcycles in Thailand and elsewhere in Asia without building plants there.