Kesu01 / Depositphotos.com
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Today candidate for Governor Mandela Barnes holds a campaign event at a Madison bicycle shop.
He’ll be at Black Saddle Bike Shop to talk about how Donald Trump’s tariffs are harming Wisconsin businesses.
One place Madela is sure not to visit is Harley Davidson – they’re the company that’s been devastated by Japan’s tariffs. Japan’s tariffs on Harleys make it almost impossible to buy one of their big bikes over there. The most recent estimates are that Harley sold 15,000 bikes in Japan. Consider Japanese car companies sold 1.3-million cars made in Japan in the United States. Japanese nameplates control 40-percent of the U.S. car market. And the tariffs on Harleys are so high that no one can afford them there.
So we’re in a nonsensical situation. Tariffs are fine when other countries use them against us, but tariffs are baaadddd when we use them against other countries.
And so far all of the predictions about the Trump tariffs have turned out not to be true. We were told tariffs would spike inflation; not exactly. Inflation is at 3-percent. It went to 11-percent under Joe Biden. We were told that the economy would slow. Nope. Gross domestic product climbed 3.8% in the last three months.
What Donald Trump knows, and that others are slow to learn, is that the United State of America is the largest consumer market in the world. No nation has more buying power than us. If we retaliate with tariffs of our own, there’s no other nation for other countries to sell their stuff.
So, while Mandela Barnes is peddling around a bicycle shop in Madison… I’ll give some free advice to his opponent Tom Tiffany: go to Harley Davidson’s headquarters in Milwaukee or their factory in Tomahawk. Ask them what impact it would have on their company if they could sell 100,000 of their bikes in Japan. The candidate who can make that happen is the real friend of Wisconsin workers.
Chris Conley
Comments