Honda and Kawasaki got around the tariff by establishing big bike plants in the U.S., so those models would no longer be considered imports. Clever, and led to the employment of thousands of Americans.
The common belief is that Honda built their Goldwing plant in Marysville, Ohio to avoid the tariffs levied on imported cars and bikes by US President Ronnie Raygun's government. In actual fact, Honda started work on the plant in 1977, 4 years before Ronnie was elected to office.
President Raygun brought in the tariffs on large imported bikes and cars as well, to keep American made bikes and cars viable, and more importantly, to keep American auto workers in jobs. Prior to all this, Honda had already started to build their plant in Ohio after a deal was done with the government to "gift" Honda the land, provide massive tax breaks, and provide them with free utilities for the first couple of years, and large discounts thereafter. Between 1977 and 1990, the government (on behalf of the US taxpayer) invested 131 million dollars in the Marysville plant.
The government obviously saw it as a great opportunity for local employment, and apart from avoiding the tariffs and the financial breaks, Honda was able to also save millions in shipping costs to it's then largest customer.
Sadly Goldwing manufacturing was moved back to Japan in 2009. There were several reasons for this, Honda wanted to expand it's car manufacturing base in the US and it was cheaper to convert the Marysville plant to car manufacture than build a new plant, demand for the Goldwing in the US had dropped drastically due to the US' economic woes, and the Japanese government was putting pressure on Honda to do more manufacturing in Japan, to ease Japanese domestic unemployment.
The Marysville plant is still operating, and the Goldwing plant workers were all offered work manufacturing cars. The plant now employs 400 less workers than it did in 2009, but no-one (initially) lost their jobs as a result of the GW manufacturing being moved back to the US.
Harley Davidson sales have actually improved markedly in the US since 2009, and HD expects to sell around 245,000 units worldwide in 2012. While the US is still Harley's biggest market, Harley sales worldwide account for approx 40% of Harley's annual revenue. The answer to the "How can Harley's old pushrod designs compete against modern technology" question that non-Harley folk have been asking for as long as I can remember is, Harley has no intention of competing, they're doing just fine, thanks very much. Cheers, Terry.
