Trade war prompts Giant to roll bicycle manufacturing out of China and into Taiwan

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/06/18
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — As what started to be a trickle starts to become a flood of manufacturers shifting production away from China to Taiwan and other countries as a result of the Trump tariffs, the world's biggest bike maker Giant tells Bloomberg that "Made in China" is over.

In an interview with Bloomberg at its corporate headquarters in Taichung, Taiwan, Giant Manufacturing Co. (捷安特) Chairwoman Bonnie Tu said that her company took Trump's threats seriously in September last year and soon shut down a China-based plant. When Trump ramped the tariffs up to 25 percent in May, the company accelerated its efforts to shift most U.S. orders out of China.

Giant's factory in Taiwan now has to run double shifts in order to catch up with the relocated orders. Tu said that "the era of Made In China and supplying globally is over."

Instead, she said there is a growing trend of "moving production close to your market," as evidenced by the company's new plans for a factory in Gyongyos, Hungary and efforts to find a partner in Southeast Asia.
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