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  1. In one sentence he is arguing for a free market, and in the other says that his company needs an advantage to compete. I really admire the consistency this guy brings to the table

  2. Accomplished_Fan_487 on

    What exactly is the advantage of making bicycles in the US? One could argue that Taiwan is at risk due to China and that the Chinese wouldn’t want to supply them anymore after a Taiwan takeover. Beyond that? I don’t see it. The concept of “saving American jobs” seems a tad silly. Why spend $60k+ on an American doing it versus some dude in Asia making the frame?

  3. That is the reasoning behind tariffs. To make domestic manufacturers equally competitive. However in practice everyone just raises prices and he seems to want to make foreign bikes uncompetitively priced.

  4. The same people that argue for free market etc. argue for protectionism because nobody wants to buy their shitty products

  5. InvestigatorFun9871 on

    I’m an engineer in an American factory making products for Americans. The tariffs fucking make everything harder. Supply chains span continents. You can’t rebuild that overnight.

  6. FroggingMadness on

    You can make frames domestically in the west though, countless brands do, you’re just gonna have to produce high quality boutique products for people willing to spend that extra bit, not mass market stuff.

    Nor would tariffs make your mass market stuff cheaper, they’d only make everyone else’s stuff more expensive.

  7. Someone explain to me how artificially hobbling competitors is a “level playing field”.

  8. goodenuffiguess on

    Cool deal, I guess its just FUCK everyone needing a bike post adolescence. Can he hook me up with an american made rear derailleur?? Or does he still plan to get all of the components from overseas???

  9. FlummoxedGaoler on

    Can someone explain to me how he’s wrong? Good faith question here. It seems like a lot of manufacturing is sent overseas to countries with low to no safety requirements or oversight for workers, unfair pay, coercive employment practices or sometimes literal slavery, and low to no environmental regulation. We basically find countries willing to destroy the environment and exploit workers *for us* because it’s not legal here. Like didn’t Giant just have a bunch of frames held at customs for coercive working conditions, and Shimano was tied to something similar? It seems like a tariff basically makes it less profitable (since people skip on purchasing more expensive items) to exploit foreign people and moves manufacturing to domestic businesses with regulations and recourse for violations. If we take the free market stuff out of his point, it does seem like disincentivizing foreign manufacturing in countries with fewer protections and using, in this case, American manufacturers instead would be more ethical in terms of human and environmental cost. But I may be missing something.

  10. ParkerGuitarGuy on

    Tarrifs are government policy and taxes imposed upon the free market to force consumers to spend money in ways other than they originally intended. It is, by definition, government interference of the free market. The free market did choose cheap overseas goods and services – this guy calling it a joke doesn’t invalidate that. Their beef is that the free market didn’t go along with their plan for prosperity in it. It’s a market, not a charity.

  11. Fuck Guardian. Dealt with their bullshit “we’re building in the US now” delay for a month. Missed my kids birthday and they gave zero fucks, didn’t even offer a discount.

    Ordered almost the same bike from Priority and it arrived in 3 days.

    I hope guardian goes under

  12. >We’re interested in building a sustainable U.S. bike industry that doesn’t collapse every time a container ship gets stuck somewhere.

    Maybe don’t make them from aluminum then, dumbo.

  13. Fun fact: Guardian uses raw materials from foreign nations subject to tariffs, they use foreign machinery subject to tariffs, and they use foreign components subject to tariffs.

    Theyre subject to the tariffs, adding more doesn’t help them.

    You’d have to be a business school dropout to not understand this basic reality…

  14. RidetheSchlange on

    So Guardian wants to tariff everyone at 150 per bike because it can’t produce anything but a Huffy level piece of shit?

  15. The AI generated response is the cherry on top. It’s giving “I can’t even be bothered to prepare my own response in good faith.”

  16. Rather than make everything that comes from overseas more expensive, we should be giving incentives to companies who try to build things here.

  17. olllooolollloool on

    I’m fine with this; I think we should punish companies who take advantage of impoverished people and build their products in cheaper labor environments purely for profits’ sake. I think incentivizing people to buy American made goods (by making artificially cheap, imported products more expensive) is a great thing.

  18. We bought a guardian for my kid, and she loves it. I don’t want to shit on the brand, or the quality. She digs it, it holds up, and it was so easy for her to hop on and go. Their marketing around the bikes making learning to ride easy is 100% on point.

    But how fucking tone deaf is that post? Sure, you’re making your bikes in the US. Great. But it’s not like every material in your factory comes from the US. How are you so unaware of how supply chains work?

  19. Mammoth_Ingenuity_82 on

    In today’s US political climate where you fall in line with the liberal Dem narrative or get cancelled (or…worse) this was not a smart thing to do.

    Riley should have been smart and do like so many others have to – stay in the closet and keep your head down and mouth shut.

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