The challenge
A U.S. bicycle company built its products around proprietary technology that no domestic or third-country manufacturer could replicate at the volume, turnaround time, and small-batch scale the company needed.
When the first Trump Administration imposed Section 301 tariffs on Chinese-origin goods beginning in 2018, the additional duties on the company's bicycles became a threat, eroding operating margins to unsustainable levels and putting its U.S. jobs at risk.
That same year, the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) established a formal tariff exclusion process, giving the company a path to seek relief for its core bicycle products.
Our approach
LNE Group prepared the company's original exclusion request in 2018 and carried that strategy through successive rounds of review and across multiple presidential administrations, developing and presenting the business case in a compelling and compliant fashion.
Each submission documented the absence of viable domestic or third-country manufacturing alternatives and quantified the economic harm the tariffs would cause.