Bicycles and bike parts are among more than 5,000 Chinese imports that will be subject to a 10 percent tariff taking effect Monday.

The owner of Bend bike shop WebCyclery & WebSkis, Kevin Gorman said he has no doubt that the price of parts and complete bikes will go up, especially when the tariff jumps to 25 percent Jan. 1. Some suppliers are urging shops to stock up, but he hesitates to spend money prematurely. “With Trump, you never know what’s going to happen,” he said.

A 25 percent tariff would add $500 to the price tag of a $2,000 bike, which is enough to slow sales, Gorman said. “It will make things a little tighter next year is my guess,” he said.

This is President Donald Trump’s broadest round of tariffs yet, affecting $200 billion in goods, including seafood, ski gloves, construction material and furniture. The office of the U.S. Trade Representative finalized the tariffs on Sept. 18 in response to China’s unfair trade practices. Not included in the final list were about 300 items, including smart watches, Bluetooth devices, bicycle helmets, child safety car seats and playpens.

The tariffs are supposed to protect and encourage U.S. based manufacturing, but even Central Oregon businesses that make their products here are seeing a negative impact from tariffs.

The Robert Axle Project, which makes bicycle axles from domestic aluminum and steel, has seen aluminum costs increase 11 percent to 16 percent, depending on the supplier, and steel costs increase 7 percent since tariffs took effect this year, co-founder Katy Bryce said.

Bryce said she doesn’t intend to pass cost increases along to customers, which are mostly bike shops and individual cyclists. But she’s worried that demand will drop because of the new tariffs on finished bikes, most of which are imported. “The less bikes that come into our country, the less bikes people are riding, the less parts we’re going to sell,” Bryce said.

Tariffs benefit U.S. raw materials producers because they can raise prices without driving customers to foreign competitors, said Scott Mills, president of Smith Brothers Pushrods in Redmond, which makes after-market parts for drag racing and other vehicles.

“In the end, I think it’ll just be inflationary,” Mills said. “We’re not the only ones passing along price increases.”

Smith Brothers, which is one of the machine shops that supplies The Robert Axle Project, spends several hundred thousand dollars a year on aluminum, steel, brass and bronze. The company buys its steel from Europe and the United States, Mills said, and it’s paying much more since tariffs on European steel took effect in the spring.

“You try to pass on what you can,” Mills said. “From there, it erodes our profit margins.”

Smith Brothers’ cost of raw materials was up 35 percent in the second quarter from the same period in 2017, he said.

Bend-based Les Schwab Tire Centers opposed even steeper tariffs that former President Barack Obama imposed on Chinese tires for a three-year period starting in 2009. “We are disappointed with the president’s decision to impose trade restrictions on an important source of worldwide tire production,” former CEO Dick Borgman said at the time.

In 2009, the company, which has more than 400 stores and employs 7,000 people in the western U.S., filed a brief with the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office warning of layoffs in the wholesale and retail tire industry.

Although Chinese tires will be subject to the new tax, Les Schwab does not expect a significant impact, said Dale Thompson, chief marketing officer. The company sources its tires from around the world and from companies with U.S. factories. “We’ve had a pretty global supply network for a long time,” he said.

— Reporter: 541-617-7860, kmclaughlin@bendbulletin.com