The future of the U.S. surfboard industry is up in the air among Trump’s bitter trade war with China via LisaBaertlein
LOS ANGELES - President Donald Trump’s decision to slap 10% tariffs on imported surfboards convinced surf executive Sue Bowers to move factory jobs out of China - but not back to the United States, which was one goal of Trump’s tariffs.
“This was Surf City,” said Bowers, general manager of Southern California Sports Industries in Orange County. She was among a half dozen U.S. surf company executives who told Reuters they support using trade policy to shelter their homegrown industry from a daunting wave of international competition. Trump delayed putting the 10% duty on cellphones, laptops and other consumer goods in hopes of blunting their impact on U.S. holiday sales. But surfboards and many other products did not win a reprieve.Southern California was surfing’s epicenter in the late 1950s and early 1960s, spawning a billion-dollar international business around surfing’s relaxed, sun-soaked lifestyle.
2018 surfboard imports hit 916,246, up from 102,850 in 2004, when the U.S. Census Bureau started collecting that trade data. Those imported surfboards now account for upwards of 90% of sales in the small and slow-growing domestic market, experts said.
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