With the Biden administration announcing a 100% tariff on clean tech coming from China, officials from Beijing were pushing back against it and the bicycle industry in the United States.
Electrek reported that the domestic bike industry, which has recently adopted the manufacturing and development of electric bicycles and imports both finished products and surplus parts outside the US, expressed concerns about the new tariff rates as they perceive that batteries and electric motors for e-bikes coming from China might also be included in them.
Most e-bikes, if not all, in the US usually start their journey in China, as it is the global leader in e-bike manufacturing. Chinese factories account for almost all e-bikes in the US.
VCPost previously reported that the tariffs were implemented to prevent American automakers from developing and manufacturing electric vehicles (EVs) and from directly competing against their Chinese counterparts.
Groups Express Worry if Biden's New Tariffs on Chinese EVs Will Affect E-Bikes
While the provisions about EVs are clear in its statement, the White House did not provide clear guidelines on whether e-bikes are included in the tariffs.
The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has not yet provided a list of HTS codes on which the tariffs would apply to EVs.
While it could be reasoned that electric bicycles are classified as consumer products and not as vehicles, it remains to be seen if the CBP might only be interested in international importation classification instead of domestic regulation classification.
Meanwhile, according to Bicycle Retailer and Industrial News (BRAIN), PeopleForBikes policy counsel Matt Moore said that the newly issued tariffs would continue to exclude e-bikes and juvenile bikes from the 25% Section 301 tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, which are scheduled to expire on May 31.
With the announcement of the new tariffs, PeopleForBikes urged industry members to contact their lawmakers and ask for "clarity and tariff relief" for bicycle products like children's bicycles, e-bikes, and bike trailers, among others.
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