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Comment by volta87 | Hacker News Reader

I recall that when Trump started taxing European steel, the EU looked for companies in Republican states that were seen positively by Trump supporters and sniped them with extremely specific tariffs.

Harley Davidson was one of these companies. They weren't doing well before they got caught in the middle of this trade war, since the "biker" culture it aimed at was shrinking globally, so in a move to survive they decided to move production to South America. Turns out their audience didn't like this move, and its death accelerated.

TL;DR: Trump put a tax on European steel, and the EU snipped Harley Davidson in retaliation.

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Trade wars do tend to be bad for everyone involved. Like rent control, it's very hard to find any economist that will even support it.

> killed Harley Davidson in retaliation

Their stock price (even over five years) doesn't appear to reflect this.

That's because the company started dying longer ago.

Their stock price today is around 30$. In the early 2000s it was around 90$.

Also, like the other comment mentioned, HD has been playing a lot of financial tricks over the last 20 years to prevent the stock price from declining (e.g. buy backs to artificially inflate stock price, take a look at the number of outstanding shares: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/HOG/harley-davidso... , a reduction from 280 million to 150 million in the 2005-2019 time period).

EDIT: I recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOwxxsPaogY for a summary.

HD was on deaths door anyway even without Trump. They've been playing financial games with production for the past 20 years and their core customers are aging out.

Agreed. The EU tariffs just accelerated HD's decline, but HD dig their own grave long time ago.

HD decision of focusing their brand on a "hardcore biker" culture that has failed (and arguably even alienated) younger customers is what killed the company.

All customers age, but what HD has failed to do is attract new customers at a faster rate than the death rate of their current customers.

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