Used to crack me up. I worked at AMF HD in York 78-79. All the guys were giving everyone **** who did not ride HD...un American, etc. I used to watch the cast wheels come into the shop in a brown cardboard box labeled Made In Japan..some Union guy's job was taking the wheels out of the brown box and putting them in the orange and black HD packaging. LOL. That was 1978. I was the final QC roller rider and I rarely would pass a bike first time thru the booth.

 

 

Haven't taken the time to read each/every post. So, this may have been brought up before. Whatever.

Basically, the artilcle quoted below indicates the "cheap" made-in-China days are fast coming to an end. Expect to see even higher prices on your Chinese goods.

>>>


Elaine Kurtenbach, AP Business Writer, On Thursday July 8, 2010, 11:09 pm EDT
SHANGHAI (AP) -- Factory workers demanding better wages and working conditions are hastening the eventual end of an era of cheap costs that helped make southern coastal China the world's factory floor.

A series of strikes over the past two months have been a rude wakeup call for the many foreign companies that depend on China's low costs to compete overseas, from makers of Christmas trees to manufacturers of gadgets like the iPad.

Where once low-tech factories and scant wages were welcomed in a China eager to escape isolation and poverty, workers are now demanding a bigger share of the profits. The government, meanwhile, is pushing foreign companies to make investments in areas it believes will create greater wealth for China, like high technology.

Many companies are striving to stay profitable by shifting factories to cheaper areas farther inland or to other developing countries, and a few are even resuming production in the West.

"China is going to go through a very dramatic period. The big companies are starting to exit. We all see the writing on the wall," said Rick Goodwin, a China trade veteran of 22 years, whose company links foreign buyers with Chinese suppliers.

"I have 15 major clients. My job is to give the best advice I can give. I tell it like it is. I tell them, put your helmet on, it's going to get ugly," said Goodwin, who says dissatisfied workers and hard-to-predict exchange rates are his top worries.

Beijing's decision to stop tethering the Chinese currency to the U.S. dollar, allowing it to appreciate and thus boosting costs in yuan, has multiplied the uncertainty for companies already struggling with meager profit margins.

In an about-face mocked on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," Wham-O, the company that created the Hula-Hoop and Slip 'n Slide, decided to bring half of its Frisbee production and some production of its other products back to the U.S.

At the other end of the scale, some in research-intensive sectors such as pharmaceutical, biotech and other life sciences companies are also reconsidering China for a range of reasons, including costs and incentives being offered in other countries.

"Life sciences companies have shifted some production back to the U.S. from China. In some cases, the U.S. was becoming cheaper," said Sean Correll, director of consulting services for Burlington, Mass.-based Emptoris.

That may soon become true for publishers, too. Printing a 9-by-9-inch, 334-page hardcover book in China costs about 44 to 45 cents now, with another 3 cents for shipping, says Goodwin. The same book costs 65 to 68 cents to make in the U.S.

"If costs go up by half, it's about the same price as in the U.S. And you don't have 30 days on the water in shipping," he says.

Even with recent increases, wages for Chinese workers are still a fraction of those for Americans. But studies do show China's overall cost advantage is shrinking.

Labor costs have been climbing about 15 percent a year since a 2008 labor contract law that made workers more aware of their rights. Tax preferences for foreign companies ended in 2007. Land, water, energy and shipping costs are on the rise.

In its most recent survey, issued in February, restructuring firm Alix Partners found that overall China was more expensive than Mexico, India, Vietnam, Russia and Romania.

Mexico, in particular, has gained an edge thanks to the North American Free Trade Agreement and fast, inexpensive trucking, says Mike Romeri, an executive with Emptoris, the consulting firm.

Makers of toys and trinkets, Christmas trees and cheap shoes already have folded by the thousands or moved away, some to Vietnam, Indonesia or Cambodia. But those countries lack the huge work force, infrastructure and markets China can offer, and most face the same labor issues as China.

So far, the biggest impact appears to be in and around Shenzhen, a former fishing village in Guangdong province, bordering Hong Kong, that is home to thousands of export manufacturers.

That includes Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology, a supplier of iPhones and iPads to Apple Inc. Foxconn responded to a spate of suicides at its 400,000-worker Shenzhen complex with pay hikes that more than doubled basic monthly worker salaries to $290. Strike-stricken suppliers to Honda Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp., among many others, also have hiked wages.

Foxconn refused repeated requests for comment on plans to move much of its manufacturing capacity to central China's impoverished Henan province, where a local government website has advertised for tens of thousands of workers on its behalf.

But among other projects farther inland, Foxconn is teaming up with some of the biggest global computer makers to build what may be the world's largest laptop production hub in Chongqing, a western China city of 32 million where labor costs are estimated to be 20 to 40 percent lower than in coastal cities.

Given the intricate supply chains and logistics systems that have helped make southern China an export manufacturing powerhouse, such changes won't be easy.

But for manufacturers looking to boost sales inside fast-growing China, shifting production to the inland areas where many migrant workers come from, and costs are lower, offers the most realistic alternative.

"The new game is to find a way to do the domestic market," says Goodwin.

Many factories in Foshan, another city in Guangdong that saw strikes at auto parts plants supplying Japan's Honda, have left in the past few months, mostly moving inland to Henan, Hunan and Jiangxi, said Lin Liyuan, dean at the privately run Institute of Territorial Economics in Guangzhou.

Massive investments in roads, railways and other infrastructure are reducing the isolation of the inland cities, part of a decade-old "Develop the West" strategy aimed at shrinking the huge, politically volatile gap in wealth between city dwellers and the country's 600 million farmers.

Gambling that the unrest will not spill over from foreign-owned factories, China's leaders are using the chance to push investment in regions that have lagged the country's industrial boom.

They have little choice. Many of today's factory workers have higher ambitions than their parents, who generally saved their earnings from assembling toys and television sets for retirement in their rural hometowns. They are also choosier about wages and working conditions. "The conflicts are challenging the current set-up of low-wage, low-tech manufacturing, and may catalyze the transformation of China's industrial sector," said Yu Hai, a sociology professor at Shanghai's Fudan University.

 

The "Made in China" is going to go the way that Japan got all the production then their wages improved so Korea took over. Then their wages improved so China took over.

China has just started to have labor trouble with rioting even. The government was very tolerant. They raised some government workers pay by 18%. They have allowed talk of unionizing. As their pay scales increase which they surely will, they will loose the ability
to be the low cost supplier.

Several companies like Wham-O have returned to the US. Some book publishers are finding that the costs with labor and the 30 day shipping time are returning to the US for book binding.

Give it time. The key factor with a global economy is that in time it will all average out.

The business that each country will have is what they excel in.

I never understood the problem to begin with. A part/product can be made anywhere in the world to the same specs and build quality period. Caterpillar for decades has made parts around the world. An intake manifold made in India, France or Asia will be a match for the part in the US. Same specs, same quality and performance.

As far as leather products go 80% of the worlds leather comes from the US. We provide the type of tanning needed and the color. The rest of the world puts it into a finished product.

I **** some off that I only care about price/quality and not where it is made. Get over it that is the way of the world from now on. Get on board or jump overboard.

 

Every chance I got I say something about crap that is made elsewhere in a Harley dealer, and I never by stuff from them an last is made in USA period!!!
and we are the crowd that can change that,just take the idem to the register and look at the sticker there, and say something like,WHAT made in CHINA! I ain't gonna wear this,Harley is a American Icon, lets try to keep it that way...and just walk away.....
I have done this many times.......
if we keep on buying the Chinese crap they gonna keep on selling it to as....

 

by the way that is why I only have two harley T-shirts,and you beat that they are made in USA

 

Not entirely true. Only parts that are being used on atvs are being moved to Mexico. Most atv assembling will still be done here in the states.

 

 

You mustn't by much of anything anywhere with that attitude . But if you'd like to see the American icon Harley Davidson Moter Co. stay open you might want to stop that **** at the Harley dealer . The money you pay for that made in China Harley shirt , jacket , boots or whatever is NOT going to China . It's going mostly to the Motor Co. that's why they have the things made there . Times are tough and to be competitive Harley Davidson is doing like everyone else and going where it's cheap for have thing made . When you buy a $25 Harley shirt the company in China might get $1.50 of that . The shipping and distributing company will take some and the Motor Co. and retailer will get about $17 or $18 between them . So who are you REALLY hurting at the Harley dealer when you throw your little hissy fit and stomp out without buying that jacket or shirt ? Harley makes ALOT of their income on that stuff . If we all boycot the made in China stuff at the dealer we might just have to buy our next bike at a Honda dealer , because the Motor Co. might be closing . Wake the f**k up !