QuickTake:

The Trump administration’s tariffs hit home at Burley, a Eugene business that sells bicycle trailers that are manufactured overseas. The CEO told the U.S. senator that volatile tariffs make it difficult to plan and to price products.

U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley toured a Eugene business Monday, Nov. 24, and heard about how the Trump administration’s tariffs are snarling its long-range planning efforts and cutting into its bottom line. 

Burley, a 19-employee Eugene company, sells bike trailers and its manufacturing partners are overseas, primarily in China, but also in Taiwan and Portugal. As tariffs have gone up and down, it’s added a measure of unpredictability to the company.

“For us, it’s about getting the right level of quality in our product,” Allison Straub, president and CEO of Burley in Eugene, told the Democratic senator during a visit and tour Monday. “It’s precious cargo. We haul children. We haul pets on roadways. We’re getting people outside and active.”

Straub said the company won’t compromise on its commitment to quality and safety. Further, manufacturing is not something that can easily be moved from one location to another, Straub said.

The current tariff rate her company pays is 20%, though it’s ranged from 10% to 145% from February through May, she said, adding that there’s “a lot of volatility going on.”

Retail prices are set months in advance, she said, meaning it’s difficult to do so amid the unpredictability.

“We don’t want to increase any retail prices, because we want to keep our product affordable for families,” Straub said. “We want to be able to let them get outside. So to have it fluctuate causes a lot of uncertainty and makes it really difficult to plan.”

Straub led Merkley on a tour of the company’s warehouse, where it ships its products to wholesalers and retailers. The warehouse also includes an area for filming videos about Burley products.

The tariffs force the company to look for ways to cut back, Straub said. 

“It’s money that we would otherwise be allocating to a lot of investment initiatives to grow our brand,” Straub said.

Merkley told her his policy staff would be in touch with her. 

In an interview with Lookout Eugene-Springfield, Merkley said President Donald Trump’s tariffs are “completely chaotic.”

“Because they’re going up and down all the time, farmers don’t know what to plant, manufacturers don’t know what to make or what their markets will be,” he said. 

Merkley said the uncertainty does not aid Trump’s stated goal of tariffs: to boost production in the United States.

“So none of that accomplishes the goal of increasing the creation of factories in the United States, because people do not launch plans to build factories when they don’t know what the rules of the road will be two to three years from now,” the senator said. “It’s a mess.”

The broader question of whether Trump can even impose tariffs without congressional approval rests with the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard arguments in the case Nov. 5. 

“I would be very surprised if they don’t tell the president: ‘You cannot do this,’” Merkley said.

Ben Botkin covers politics and policy in Lane County. He has worked as a journalist since 2003, most recently at the Oregon Capital Chronicle, where he covered justice, health and human services and documented regional efforts to combat fentanyl addiction. Botkin has worked in statehouses in Idaho, Nevada, Oklahoma and, of course, Oregon. When he's not working, you'll find him road tripping across the West, hiking or surfing along the Oregon Coast.