Does Trump Believe “Tariff” Is A Beautiful Word Because He Hates Bikes?

You know the world is not the one in which you grew up when beliefs that might’ve been dismissed as conspiracy theories only a few years ago actually seem like reasonable explanations of what’s going on.

To wit:  I can’t help but to think that Trump’s tariffs are intended, at least in part, to induce a worldwide economic depression so that he, Elon Musk and their cohorts can buy (through proxies in the case of Trump and other elected officials) stocks, real estate and other commodities at a fraction of their previous costs.  Some very wealthy people did exactly that in response to the market crashes of 1929, 1987 and 2008.

Also, Trump’s claim that he’s imposing tariffs to bring manufacturing back to the United States is, at best, a partial truth.  For one thing, it will take years, or even decades, to re-shore the fabrication of goods.  And, when (or if) industry “returns,” it won’t be in shuttered Detroit auto plants or Pittsburgh steel mills—if indeed they’re still standing.  Instead, new facilities—whether in those industries or others—will open up in the so-called “right to work” states, where unions are weak or nonexistent.  So, the jobs, which will be fewer In number because of automation, won’t offer the standard of living, health and other benefits or protections (in case, say, a worker is disabled because is working conditions) that workers enjoyed until about the 1970s.

In other words, the tariffs that are supposed to “Make America Great Again” will only make the wealthy wealthier and fewer in number but make everyone else poorer—and many of them more fearful and therefore willing to submit to onerous demands.

Oh, and nobody involved in the US bicycle industry thinks any good will come of those tariffs. The vast majority of bikes, e-bikes and anything related to them come from China and other countries that have been slapped with the largest tariffs. Of the 10 million or so bikes sold annually in the US, fewer than 500,000 (five percent) are even assembled in the US; virtually none are made entirely in the US. 

I recall that about thirty years ago, one of the mountain bike magazines tried to build an all-American bike. It was, of course, wildly expensive, as most of the parts were after-market items made by small companies (or even in someone’s garage). Even with a no-limit budget, an all-American mountain bike could not be built because, as I recall, no tires or inner tubes were (or are) made here. I imagine that at least some makers of the parts that went on that bike are no longer in business or were bought by bigger companies that are making the parts in—you guessed it—China or one of the other countries Trump is bullying.

On top of the situation I’ve described, many shops and distributors are sitting in inventory they bought after the COVID boom cleared out shelves and warehouses. Many consumers who wanted to buy during the pandemic, but couldn’t, waited. But when inventory finally arrived, they were no longer interested. So, in a cruel irony, after shops closed a few months into the pandemic because they couldn’t get inventory, others are now closing because they can’t get rid of it—or had to sell for less than what they paid.

The tariffs probably won’t affect the prices of what dealers already have. But it will most likely deter some from bringing in new bikes, helmets and the like, as consumers will be less interested in buying.

So..in keeping with the original premise of this post:  I don’t think I’m being a conspiracy theorist when I say, given his anti-bike rhetoric, Donald Trump had the bike industry in mind when he imposed tariffs—which he called “the most beautiful word in the dictionary “—that could potentially double the prices of bicycles, e-bikes and anything related to them. And he probably believes that by punishing cyclists, he’s rewarding the fossil fuel-related industries.

100 Years Later, It Really Is Fine

 The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all of the people who say he is very good.

So opined Robert Graves. I could make a similar remark about something many of you have read:  The Great Gatsby really is a fine novel in spite of generations of teachers pounding just how fine it is into their students’ heads.

A few years ago, I winced when I learned that when my freshman and sophomore college students told me that, when they were in high school, they had to write essays about the symbolism of the green light Jay Gatsby sees across the harbor, on Daisy's dock. Before those students' parents—and, possibly, grandparents—were born, I had to write an essay on the same topic.  While I found it interesting—it was one of the first things that made me realize literary interpretation wasn’t just a pursuit for people with too much time on their hands-- it probably “killed” the novel, and perhaps any interest in literature, for many other students.

So why am I talking about such things today when spring “classics” are in progress and there’s all sorts of important news in the world of cycling? Well, 100 years ago today, The Great Gatsby was published.

To me, it’s an appropriate time to invoke my “Howard Cosell Rule

The Councils Are Going Broke. Blame Cyclists.

"Americans can be trusted to do the right thing once all other possibilities have been exhausted."

That remark has been attributed to Winston Churchill, though experts on him can't find any tape, transcript or other record of him saying it.

Whoever said it, I wish that it were true of today's right-wing politicians.  Coaches, trainers, athletic directors and boosters sexually abuse athletes, yet the Fake Tan Fuhrer and his allies blame transgender athletes on girls' and womens' teams--which number something like ten in the whole United States--for endangering innocent young female gymnasts, skaters, basketball players, cyclists and other performers.  I have yet to hear of any anti-LGBTQ politician who went after the real perpetrators. Perhaps some day....

Or maybe they never will.  It seems that these days, a strategy of the far- and even center-right around the world is to scapegoat people, organizations and movements that are very small in number or limited in scope, much as Hitler targeted Jews (who, even where they were the largest presence, still represented a small fraction of the population), Romani and other minorities including, yes, LGBT people.  I still recall how the Reagan Administration targeted the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts, ostensibly as defecit-reducing measures, even though they represented something like .005 percent of the Federal Budget and, as even the Wall Street Journal noted, contributed far more to the economy, not to mention the culture.

Now it seems that one of right wing's targets, in the UK as in the US, is bicycle infrastructure.  It's one thing to blame a bike lane for a loss of parking spaces or emergency vehicle access.  But it's simply ludicrous to attribute the sorry state of a local government's finances to the money it spent on a bike lane, mainly because it's almost invariably a tiny part of the budget but also because (at least in the US), those funds may have come from a state or the Federal government, usually as part of an allocation for transportation.

But that hasn't stopped politicians on either side of the Atlantic.  Among the most recent is Nigel Farage, the Reform Party leader and former member of the UK Independence Party--you know, the folks who campaigned for Brexit.  This morning he claimed that local councils are "on the verge of bankruptcy" because of "huge departments of people dealing with climate change" and the "tens of millions of pounds" those councils "wasted" on "cycle lanes nobody uses."

Image credit:  Simon MacMichael/Gage Skidmore via the BBC

Now, I can't argue against, or vouch for the last part of his assertion.  But a look at the charge that the councils are throwing money at bike infrastructure is, to say the least, exaggerated.  Some councils spend little or nothing on bicycle infrastructure or other "active travel."  But even for those that spent the most, like Kingston, spending for active transport (which includes walking and other non-motorized modes as well as cycling) is only around 4 to 5 percent of the total budget, with around a third of that coming from core funds and the rest from grants.  As a whole, the UK spends about two percent of its transportation budget on cycling infrastructure. 

All of this leads me to believe that if Nigel Farage were in Winston Churchill's place during the Blitz, he would have turned his ire toward Dame Myra Hess.