I'm sorry that I didn't answer this earlier.
Economy is often a big subject for politics, isn't it not? I remember the day Americans beating on a Japanese cars back in 80's claiming taking jobs off of Americans. And the tariff put by Reagan not importing foreign made motorbikes bigger than 700cc. I hope to meet you someday, 333 and have a drink. And ride around bikes. Wait, maybe before we drink. Well I don't care anyhow.
In this case, bringing politics in to this subject would be saying which party is to blame or which one could fix it better. I'm staying far away from that.
Let me refresh your memory about the history of Japanese cars. They came into this country as extremely cheap cars, late 50s/early 60s. People who either couldn't afford anything but the cheapest car out there, or who couldn't care less about quality bought them. And make no mistake, they were cheap, POS cars. The engines weren't so bad, but they were small and underpowered compared to the U.S. cars of the day. As the Japanese started to address the quality and safety issues, they could no longer afford the import taxes required to get them into this country. They started by shipping most of the components in as "parts", which was far cheaper tax wise, and assembling them here. In the end, you see what we have now. A car that is truly made here.
Now, a bit of motorcycle history. I believe Honda was first to import small bikes in 1959. I think the biggest was maybe a 250cc. The Harley types didn't like this at all, but kept relatively quiet. But then Honda changed everything in '69 with the CB750, and started the Superbike wars. Harley was loosing serious market share, and started referring to the Jap bikes as disposable. The 4 Japanese manufacturers were dominating racing world wide, and by this time, Harley was #5 in the U.S. behind the Japanese. As the mid 80s approached, there were suddenly too many bikes on the market. I don't know why. It might have been over production, or a slump in the economy, but Harley(and the Japanese) were hurting. Harley convinced lawmakers that the Japanese were to blame, and they came up with the excise tax on 700cc+ bikes. That was when Honda thought to do what their automotive counterparts did, and started making the bikes here.
