This company builds e-bikes in the U.S. But Trump’s tariffs are going to hit it hard—and every other bike brand

Inside a warehouse in Santa Clara, California, a company called Vintage Electric Bikes builds sleek e-bikes with retro styling, customized for each customer’s order.

But like other bike brands, the components it uses come from a global supply chain. “The bicycle industry, there’s just no f***ing way we can survive 100% [made in] America,” says Eddie Johnson, sales director at the company. “It’s not possible.”

That means that tariffs, if they stay in place, will hit the industry hard. Last year, 115 electric bike brands left the market after another round of tariffs went into effect, according to Peter Woolery, who analyzes bike industry data. (Those tariffs were put in place during the first Trump administration, but e-bikes had a temporary exemption that expired last summer and President Biden did not renew.)

When Vintage Electric Bikes first launched more than a decade ago, it tried to do as much as possible locally, working with local welders and machine shops to make parts like frames and handlebars. But when one key local foundry closed—after Google bought out its lease to expand the tech company’s offices—Vintage Electric Bikes couldn’t find another local partner to replace it. It had to begin using a supplier in Taiwan, where most of the world’s high-end bikes are now made. Other parts, like e-bike batteries and motors, always came from other countries like China. “There’s no way around it,” Johnson says.

There’s an argument that more bike assembly could happen in the U.S., Johnson says. But the hundred or so parts that go into making a bike—spokes, chains, wheels, tires, saddles, seat posts, bearings, etcetera—are unlikely to be made here. In the short term, it isn’t feasible. And if it happened over the long term, he argues that it would make products unaffordable for consumers because of higher American wages.

He makes the comparison to shoes. “Do you really think American workers are going to want to build Nike shoes? No. And if they are going to make Nike shoes, you need to invest in that factory. You need to invest in the training. And then all of a sudden, your Nike shoe has all of this added cost. Do you think the American consumer is going to buy your average Nike sneaker for a few hundred dollars?”

Still, there are already some efforts to bring back some parts of bike manufacturing. Bloom, a Detroit-based startup, is working with bike brands and other types of companies to connect them with American factories. A factory that used to do TV assembly, for example, is now working on bike assembly. Another factory that used to make car parts, like dashboards, is also working on e-bikes.

There are advantages to doing the work in the U.S. beyond supporting jobs, says Chris Nolte, Bloom’s cofounder. “If you were to assemble that product domestically, you could really reduce your stock that you need to keep on hand by probably 70%, maybe even more,” Nolte says. “There’s a significant benefit there if a company doesn’t have much cash available. They can still give the consumer the choices that they want, but have that flexibility.” It also makes it easier to take back parts, including batteries, for recycling and reuse.

There’s a chicken-and-egg problem, says Nolte: Some companies have found that doesn’t make sense to assemble in the U.S. if components aren’t made here, and conversely, it also doesn’t make sense to make components in the U.S. if assembly is happening somewhere else. But he says some large bike brands are working on plans for American manufacturing. Factories that are shared by multiple brands might be another possibility. (More complicated solutions may also be possible, like building foreign trade zones where some foreign parts could legally be imported tariff-free if a certain percentage of the other work happens in the U.S. But this type of zone is expensive to set up.)

Reshoring bike manufacturing “is going to be a pretty painful process,” says Ash Lovill, vice president of government relations at the nonprofit People for Bikes. “It just costs significantly more right now to manufacture in the U.S. All of the companies that were manufacturing in the U.S. in the ’80s and ’90s moved out; moving them back is going to be really difficult.”

To support American bike manufacturing, the government should help the industry build the infrastructure that’s necessary, she says. A bill that’s currently in Congress, the Domestic Bike Production Act, could help if it moves forward.

In the meantime, bike prices are going to jump higher. Trump’s current tariffs on China—which may change—add up to around 90% for bikes now, says Lovill. Trump also removed the “de minimis” exemption that allowed products under $800 to be imported from China without tariffs, so if companies import smaller bike parts, those will also now cost more.

Some companies still have inventory, so can wait a little longer before changing prices. (One e-bike company has been scrambling to receive a shipment that just arrived in order to avoid an unexpected $1 million tariff charge.) Others have already raised the price of their bikes. And it’s unclear how much consumers will be willing to pay at a time when the overall economy is so shaky.

“There’s going to be a shakedown,” says Johnson. “I don’t see how certain brands survive.” Vintage Electric Bikes makes a premium product; lower-end e-bikes are more at risk. “I know the margin that this industry operates on, and I know that those $1,500 bikes are already operating on a fairly thin margin. I don’t understand how overnight the e-bike consumer is going to accept the fact that they need to spend $3,500 on what was a $1,500 bike, just because of these tariffs. How do these brands survive when the consumer can’t afford the product anymore?”