4 ms·

Almost no vehicle manufacturers make all their own parts, and vetting the source of every part to make sure also were all made in the states would just mean tha

Almost no vehicle manufacturers make all their own parts, and vetting the source of every part to make sure also were all made in the states would just mean that some parts are unavailable. Also, its important to think of the other side of the made in the U.S.A. label which was to bring foreign manufacturers to the states for our market. Think Honda and Toyota. Getting the majority of the parts made here and the assembly here was a major benefit to those areas it affected compared to having that all happen in Japan. If you required 100% or close to it, would that have even happened? There are both positives and negatives to the current system, but in a global market I'm not sure it's sane to expect complex products with many parts to have a single national origin.

KennyBlanken 2y ago
Nobody is "expecting complex products with many parts to have a single origin." And normally I'd agree that Made In the USA is diet xenophobia, but Harley specifically, and heavily, lean into being "made in the USA" - as do their owners, and certain politicians who introduced tariffs (and caused retaliatory tariffs in the EU. Which Harley sidestepped by, drumroll please...opening assembly plants in southeast Asia!) Some engine components, some drivetrain components, all the electricals, all the suspension, and wheels are all made outside the US. That leaves the frame/body panels and some engine/drivetrain components as the only stuff sourced in the US - and yes, the engine/bike assembled in the US.
- kbenson 2y ago
  > And normally I'd agree that Made In the USA is diet xenophobia, but Harley specifically, and heavily, lean into being "made in the USA" - as do their owners And so do Toyota and Honda for the vehicles that are made here, but even those are only a certain percentage, which allows them to say so. It's the same playing field, so I don't really think it matters. And honestly, I think most people if pressed care that it's assembled here by people here and that at least most the parts are from here, especially major parts. Beyond that it's just corporate branding and PR, and as long as they're all playing by the same rules and people generally understand and agree with it (which I think they do, and if they don't I think if they were pressed to think about it they would come to understand fairly quickly and think it's mostly okay if presented all the facts), so I have a hard time getting thinking it's all that big of a deal, as long as the majority of U.S. sold bikes are made in the U.S. and bikes sold elsewhere are made wherever. I do think it's all a bit stupid and a big PITA, but they all do it so they're all stupid and weird in the same way. Note: I'm not really sure why people decided to downvote you instead of engage, it's not like I think your POV on HD is invalid, just different than how I see it, so I gave you an upvote to counteract it a little. Maybe someone else can do the same. Seemed a shame to have a valid position not given any discussion.
mindslight 2y ago
To do this right you'd have to set up something like a VAT style system where each vendor in the tree specifies how much of the value of their product was produced in the US. Otherwise the obvious incentive is to import the largest subassemblies you can, with perfunctory final assembly in the US. Then again this would give foreign made products a running start (Amazon Chineseum that's 3x the cost of Aliexpress - 70% made in the US!), and it would probably be only that last 20-30% that actually resulted in domestic blue collar jobs which are the ostensible desire of such labeling.
- londons_explore 2y ago
  This is done, but it's pretty easy to game by pricing parts 'unusually'. Especially when it is a subsidary of your own company producing the parts overseas, you can decide if ECU control circuit boards are worth $1 or $1000. And you would be able to produce paperwork and find experts who would value it at either, or anywhere in the middle. (since there is no market price for highly specialist circuit boards which can't be sold to anyone else).
  - mindslight 2y ago
    I'd say there's a hard floor for the cost of board components plus the labor/management of assembling them. But yes I can imagine fraud being generally rampant. It does make you think though, now that we've got such computation and communication capabilities - if creating and publishing such kinds of reports became mandatory, such that individual consumers could benefit from a lot more analysis on what they're buying rather than the mere final price.
  - gamblor956 2y ago
    No, you can't. This is governed by transfer pricing laws. Tax authorities can and will assess penalties for behavior like that.
    - londons_explore 2y ago
      > For tax purposes such transactions are treated by reference to the profit that would have arisen if the transactions had been carried out under comparable conditions by independent parties. [UK tax authority] And thats where the fact engine ECU's are useless to anyone else comes into it - their market value can be near nil.

KennyBlanken 2y ago

Nobody is "expecting complex products with many parts to have a single origin." And normally I'd agree that Made In the USA is diet xenophobia, but Harley specifically, and heavily, lean into being "made in the USA" - as do their owners, and certain politicians who introduced tariffs (and caused retaliatory tariffs in the EU. Which Harley sidestepped by, drumroll please...opening assembly plants in southeast Asia!) Some engine components, some drivetrain components, all the electricals, all the suspension, and wheels are all made outside the US. That leaves the frame/body panels and some engine/drivetrain components as the only stuff sourced in the US - and yes, the engine/bike assembled in the US.

kbenson 2y ago
> And normally I'd agree that Made In the USA is diet xenophobia, but Harley specifically, and heavily, lean into being "made in the USA" - as do their owners And so do Toyota and Honda for the vehicles that are made here, but even those are only a certain percentage, which allows them to say so. It's the same playing field, so I don't really think it matters. And honestly, I think most people if pressed care that it's assembled here by people here and that at least most the parts are from here, especially major parts. Beyond that it's just corporate branding and PR, and as long as they're all playing by the same rules and people generally understand and agree with it (which I think they do, and if they don't I think if they were pressed to think about it they would come to understand fairly quickly and think it's mostly okay if presented all the facts), so I have a hard time getting thinking it's all that big of a deal, as long as the majority of U.S. sold bikes are made in the U.S. and bikes sold elsewhere are made wherever. I do think it's all a bit stupid and a big PITA, but they all do it so they're all stupid and weird in the same way. Note: I'm not really sure why people decided to downvote you instead of engage, it's not like I think your POV on HD is invalid, just different than how I see it, so I gave you an upvote to counteract it a little. Maybe someone else can do the same. Seemed a shame to have a valid position not given any discussion.

mindslight 2y ago

To do this right you'd have to set up something like a VAT style system where each vendor in the tree specifies how much of the value of their product was produced in the US. Otherwise the obvious incentive is to import the largest subassemblies you can, with perfunctory final assembly in the US. Then again this would give foreign made products a running start (Amazon Chineseum that's 3x the cost of Aliexpress - 70% made in the US!), and it would probably be only that last 20-30% that actually resulted in domestic blue collar jobs which are the ostensible desire of such labeling.

londons_explore 2y ago
This is done, but it's pretty easy to game by pricing parts 'unusually'. Especially when it is a subsidary of your own company producing the parts overseas, you can decide if ECU control circuit boards are worth $1 or $1000. And you would be able to produce paperwork and find experts who would value it at either, or anywhere in the middle. (since there is no market price for highly specialist circuit boards which can't be sold to anyone else).
- mindslight 2y ago
  I'd say there's a hard floor for the cost of board components plus the labor/management of assembling them. But yes I can imagine fraud being generally rampant. It does make you think though, now that we've got such computation and communication capabilities - if creating and publishing such kinds of reports became mandatory, such that individual consumers could benefit from a lot more analysis on what they're buying rather than the mere final price.
- gamblor956 2y ago
  No, you can't. This is governed by transfer pricing laws. Tax authorities can and will assess penalties for behavior like that.
  - londons_explore 2y ago
    > For tax purposes such transactions are treated by reference to the profit that would have arisen if the transactions had been carried out under comparable conditions by independent parties. [UK tax authority] And thats where the fact engine ECU's are useless to anyone else comes into it - their market value can be near nil.