Trump Says His Harley Voters Oppose Production Shift Overseas

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump said Harley-Davidson Motorcycles Inc. risks losing customers if it shifts production overseas.

“I think they’re going to take a big hit,” Trump said in an interview with Maria Bartiromo taped on Friday and broadcast on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” “Those are my voters,” he added. “They don’t want Harley Davidson getting cute to make two dollars more.”

The European Union’s retaliation to Trump’s steel and aluminum levies will cost about $2,200 per motorcycle shipped to Harley’s second-biggest market in the world, the company has estimated. So it’s shifting the production of bikes for European riders to unspecified overseas plants.

Milwaukee-based Harley sells no motorcycles in the U.S. that are built overseas, and the company has said that’s not going to change.

Trump tweeted about Harley-Davidson on three consecutive days last week, including a lament that “I’ve done so much for you, and then this.” But the company has long produced motorcycles in foreign countries for other markets, including at an assembly plant in Brazil opened two decades ago.

The planned production shift is about products destined for EU markets to avoid 31 percent tariffs on those made in America. The company’s stock is down 17 percent this year.

Asked if he should, as president, be calling out specific companies by name when he disagrees with their actions, Trump said “yes, I should.”

“Every one who ever bought a Harley-Davidson voted for Trump,” he said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Ros Krasny in Washington at rkrasny1@bloomberg.net;Craig Torres in Washington at ctorres3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Murray at brmurray@bloomberg.net, Ros Krasny, Bernard Kohn

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