The EU has responded to Donald Trump’s unilateral imposition of tariffs with an extra 50% import duty on American-made motorcycles over 500cc. In an announcement made before Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ global tariff barrier was unveiled, the EU was responding to his earlier imposition of 25% tariffs on EU and UK steel, aluminium and derivatives.

A rate of up to 50% will be applied to a wide range of imports from the US, with the top rate hitting Harley-Davidson and Indian, but not electric bike maker Zero. A second phase of tariffs, to include smaller bikes and electrics, may follow, but it’s highly likely that the Trump administration will retaliate in turn, imposing tariffs on European bikes, leading to just the sort of trade war from which no one benefits.

At the BMF, chair Jim Freeman expressed concern that this latest turn in the Trump tariff saga would hit the motorcycle industry on both sides of the Atlantic. “Smacks of Autarky, which was a very bad idea in 1935. Let’s hope it works as well for Trump as it did for European states in the ‘dark decade’, without leading to any international conflicts, like in the China Sea. Specifically, it could very well finish off H-D in the long run, but as that wiseacre JM Keynes said, ‘in the long-run we’re all dead’. Like austerity, it’s a dangerous idea.”

Written by Peter Henshaw

Top image courtesy of Harley-Davidson