US small item tariffs.

[Nothin-fancy]

We have Rene Herse for that lightweight retro-pean stuff.

Holy cow. I had never checked out Rene Herse stuff as it always seemed like it was overpriced copies of stuff that had it's copyright expire. Went to the website and my suspicions were definitely confirmed...

And the original stuff was uggo and expensive... $900 for a 9-11s friction derailleur. Most every derailleur made since the introduction 130 spacing will friction shift out to 11s with the correct shifters and jockey's.

 

[Uncle Grumpy]

They'll be building the Vintage Bike Part factories shortly

A big, beautiful factory, one of thousands of factories to open up here, and they contacted me and they said "Sir, please can we open our factory, your country is so hot right now and we want to be a part of it" and they are just one of many, one of thousands. Campy Deltas. I don't even know that means, but they tell me everybody wants to get some, and they'll be getting them from us. Thousands of factories. There might be more even, some say, hundreds of thousands which I think is more likely. There are numbers of vintage bike factories coming here, numbers, ocean numbers, the likes of which have never been seen before.

 

[Uncle Grumpy]

The US doesn't have anything I want

It has nice neighbours.

 

[Nothin-fancy]

the Big beautiful BIKE parts bill...

 

[Retrorockit]

Very few bikes in the US have Campy parts. Mostly MTB based stuff here. Road bikes never caught on very much. Once upon a time Schwinn made more bicycles than everyone else combined. Trek used to build here. There are some hand made metal MTBs made.

$900 for a 9-11s friction derailleur.

I'm afraid the derailleur is "friction", but the shifter is indexed (duh) It's not specified because it's custom made for the desired number of speeds, and gear spacing of your particular cassette. Well probably not yours.

 

[Canuk]

We have Rene Herse for that lightweight retro-pean stuff.

Hahahs! Rene Herse USA: overpriced, knocked up in China, re-imported copycat old toot.

Who on earth would buy such inimitable garbage, when you can have the real thing, designed, built and hand crafted by probably the greatest bicycling craftsman that ever drew breath, in France. Some things just deserve to fail. RH US is one of em.

 

[MattiThundrrr]

There's been a court ruling that Trump doesn't have the authority to impose all these tariffs. He's claiming National Emergency Powers. The court has given him until Oct. to appeal this.

The fun part of this is the 200$ billion lawsuit launched by American businesses against the government to recoup the tariffs they have already payed. "The countries will pay the tariffs "
No you fool, tariffs are a form of taxation, you can't put a tax on other countries

 

[MattiThundrrr]

they contacted me and they said "Sir, please can we open our factory, your country is so hot right now and we want to be a part of it"

"They were big men, strong men, with tears in their eyes"

 

[Retrorockit]

Hahahs! Rene Herse USA: overpriced, knocked up in China, re-imported copycat old toot.

Who on earth would buy such inimitable garbage, when you can have the real thing, designed, built and hand crafted by probably the greatest bicycling craftsman that ever drew breath, in France. Some things just deserve to fail. RH US is one of em.

Of course if they did the same thing in France it would be absolutely wonderful old world craftsmanship.
I'm not sure what the RH business model actually is. He makes wonderful 26" racing slicks in MTB size. The market for those is probably incredibly small. He wanted them for his own personal use, but they happen to be perfect for my purposes too. I'm a fan of RH not because he's US, but because he makes a product that's extremely useful to me. The only RH product I own.
Of course if you had read Jan Heines article on tariffs that I posted you would know that RH doesn't import anything from China. He's more closely aligned with Japan. The country that made British sport cars look irrelevant. Took a bite out of the Germans too. They're hanging on by mostly snob appeal.
RH is located in the Pacific NW. Many aerospace companies are located there. His parts are probably more CNC than handmade. TBH honest I don't think the Chinese would bother with the small volume of his products. They like to think big.

 

[Canuk]

Of course if they did the same thing in France it would be absolutely wonderful old world craftsmanship.
I'm not sure what the RH business model actually is. He makes wonderful 26" racing slicks in MTB size. The market for those is probably incredibly small. He wanted them for his own personal use, but they happen to be perfect for my purposes too. I'm a fan of RH not because he's US, but because he makes a product that's extremely useful to me. The only RH product I own.
Of course if you had read Jan Heines article on tariffs that I posted you would know that RH doesn't import anything from China. He's more closely aligned with Japan. The country that made British sport cars look irrelevant. Took a bite out of the Germans too. They're hanging on by mostly snob appeal.
RH is located in the Pacific NW. Many aerospace companies are located there. His parts are probably more CNC than handmade. TBH honest I don't think the Chinese would bother with the small volume of his products. They like to think big.

On the contrary, there's a very strong micro production system in China, not just for custom built bicycle parts, but custom guitars, head stocks, amplifiers, motorcycle parts, all sorts of carbon fibre car parts, in fact almost any quality product you can think of, they'll make it. You send them your designs, they charge you a one off fee, they send you back a prototype of the finished article, and you make the required changes then they do small product runs. Can be as small as 20 items. I'm sure I read in the initial start up phase of hardware that RH (US) were having their parts CNCd in China. You would be mad not to, as it's so cheap in comparison to the US or Europe.

I've a friend who got custom handlebars and stem made for vintage BSA motorbikes, he designed them himself and then sent the blueprints off to Beijing. They came back 9 weeks later looking great, well packaged and shiny, however upon inspection it was clear the metal used was not from the top tier of quality, and the chrome plating was not up to mustard. As with anything, you pays your money, you takes your choice.