As standard as biking is in lots of elements of the U.S., manufacturing bikes just isn’t.
In response to Statista, in 2022, the U.S. imported greater than $2.2 billion price of bicycles, whereas exporting a worth of simply 171 million in bicycles by comparability. The vast majority of imported bicycles within the U.S. originate in China.
Because the COVID-19 pandemic, bike producers worldwide have struggled to seek 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 desires to reinvigorate American bicycle manufacturing and has proposed the Home Bicycle Product Act, which takes a three-pronged method to jolting U.S. bike manufacturing to life:
- Implement a 10-year tariff suspension on imported bicycle parts reminiscent of frames, wheel rims, hubs, saddles, pedals, and so on. The hope is this could 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.
- Supply 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 many years 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 have been produced within the E.U., a ten% improve from 2021 and a 29% improve from the prior decade. Blumenauer believes these outcomes have been achieved largely as a result of a mixture of “robust commerce insurance policies and investing in manufacturing amenities.”
The newest race content material, interviews, options, critiques and skilled shopping for guides, direct to your inbox!
U.S.-based Pivot Cycles’ founder Chris Cocalis is a supporter of canceling import taxes on biking parts as the corporate at the moment 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 stated in an interview with Singletracks. “The very 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 embrace the typically extra 25% responsibility sure elements could warrant, and that each one these import taxes add as much as making it troublesome for Pivot to develop as a model – a removing of these tariffs would alleviate a number of the monetary challenges of being a smaller, U.S.-based bike producer.
The Home Bicycle Product Act continues to be in its early levels, 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 will take years in some circumstances.
Blumenauer additionally introduced he is not going to search reelection on the finish of 2024, which might put the invoice’s future in jeopardy.
Time will inform if Blumenauer’s many years of biking advocacy in Congress – together with this invoice – may have endurance after his time period is over.
