How Harley-Davidson went from Trump’s favorite motorcycle to an American pariah.

[Shades]

How Harley-Davidson went from Trump's favorite motorcycle to an American pariah.

The following article is a written adaptation of an episode of Thrilling Tales of Modern Capitalism, Slate's new podcast about companies in the news and how they got there.

If you tour the motorcycle exhibits at Smithsonian's American History Museum, you'll see quite a bit of notable memorabilia, including that of stunt riding legend Evel Knievel.* The daredevil biker donated some genuine artifacts from his career to the Smithsonian, including the 1972 Harley-Davidson XR-750 on which he performed some of his most famous jumps. That piece of history is now one of the crown jewels of the Smithsonian's motorcycle collection.

It's not hard to see why: Harley-Davidson is one of those storied brands, like Levi's or Coca-Cola, that represent America to itself and to the rest of the world. But over the past few years, Harley's traditional strengths, including this quintessential Americanness, have become its biggest liabilities.

It goes back to Donald Trump. The arrival of a new president with a fixation on American manufacturing seemed like good news for Harley: Company executives were invited to the White House less than a month after Trump's inauguration. It seemed like the beginning of a beautiful friendship. But being a symbol of America turned out to be a problem for Harley when Trump began trade wars with other parts of the world. In 2018, when Trump imposed 25 percent tariffs on European steel, Europe wanted to strike back, looking to hurt something that represented America. According to Gabrielle Coppola, who covers automakers for Bloomberg News, Europe's mindset ended up being, "If you're going to do that to us, we're going to place a tariff on imported Harley motorcycles."

That tariff would have added thousands of dollars to the cost of buying a Harley in Europe, but only if that Harley were made in America. So Harley started making more bikes in Thailand to sidestep the tariff—which meant Trump's effort to protect American manufacturing, à la Ronald Reagan in 1982, had the opposite effect. As a result of that, Coppola says, Harley "went from being this darling of Trump—because they represent American manufacturing and history and heritage—to, in his eyes, not supporting that narrative and his trade policy. So that caused some brand trauma. There are a lot of Harley riders that are Trump supporters because one of the main values of the brand is riders say, 'I want to buy American.' So anything that insults or dents that image is bad for them."


Read full story at: Slate.com