As well-liked as biking is in lots of components of the U.S., manufacturing bikes shouldn’t be.
In keeping with Statista, in 2022, the U.S. imported greater than $2.2 billion value of bicycles, whereas exporting a worth of simply 171 million in bicycles by comparability. Nearly all of imported bicycles within the U.S. originate in China.
For the reason that COVID-19 pandemic, bike producers worldwide have struggled to search out the “magic components” to handle meeting prices whereas offering high quality bikes. One American congressman believes he could have a solution to assist this problem.
Oregon congressman Earl Blumenauer needs to reinvigorate American bicycle manufacturing and has proposed the Home Bicycle Product Act, which takes a three-pronged strategy to jolting U.S. bike manufacturing to life:
- Implement a 10-year tariff suspension on imported bicycle elements corresponding to frames, wheel rims, hubs, saddles, pedals, and so forth. The hope is this might incentivize bicycle meeting operations within the U.S.
- Create an e-bike manufacturing tax credit score to incentivize e-bike producers to construct their merchandise within the U.S.
- Provide 12-year, low-interest loans to bicycle producers for buying capital tools for use for the aim of constructing bikes.
The Home Bicycle Product Act isn’t Blumenauer’s first foray into the world of political advocacy for biking.
Blumenauer has spent a long time advocating for bike-first infrastructure like pedestrian bridges and bike lanes throughout Oregon and he additionally based the Congressional Bike Caucus in 1996, which has since secured greater than $2.25 billion in federal funding for biking initiatives throughout the nation.
For the Home Bicycle Product Act, Blumenauer shares that he drew inspiration from Europe’s “bicycle manufacturing renaissance;” in 2022, a complete of 14.7 million bicycles had been produced within the E.U., a ten% improve from 2021 and a 29% improve from the prior decade. Blumenauer believes these outcomes had been achieved largely attributable to a mixture of “sturdy commerce insurance policies and investing in manufacturing services.”
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U.S.-based Pivot Cycles’ founder Chris Cocalis is a supporter of canceling import taxes on biking elements as the corporate at present assembles most of their bikes in Tempe, Arizona.
“[Assembling bikes in the U.S.] permits us to be versatile, provide extra packages and be the high-end model that we’re,” Cocalis mentioned in an interview with Singletracks. “The actual fact is that just about each half that we import has someplace between a 3 and 11% responsibility on it.”
Cocalis went on to say that the three to 11% responsibility doesn’t embody the typically extra 25% responsibility sure components could warrant, and that each one these import taxes add as much as making it troublesome for Pivot to develop as a model – a elimination of these tariffs would alleviate a few of the monetary challenges of being a smaller, U.S.-based bike producer.
The Home Bicycle Product Act remains to be in its early phases, having solely been drafted in late February 2024. The Act’s draft should undergo many rounds of subcommittee and committee approvals and rewrites earlier than it’s voted on, and this may take years in some instances.
Blumenauer additionally introduced he is not going to search reelection on the finish of 2024, which may put the invoice’s future in jeopardy.
Time will inform if Blumenauer’s a long time of biking advocacy in Congress – together with this invoice – could have endurance after his time period is over.
