Written by Bill Sternberg, a veteran Washington journalist and former editorial page editor of USA Today.
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. (Callaway Climate Insights) — Backing my golf cart out of the garage recently, I heard a sickening CRUNCH sound. I had stupidly run into my car, which was parked in the driveway.
The car was unscathed aside from a few scratches, but the Evolution Maverick’s plastic fender flare shattered into many pieces. When I stopped cursing, my first thought was: Will I be able to get the replacement part?
A year or two ago, that would not have been an issue. But U.S. trade sanctions imposed on Evolutions and other vehicles of Chinese origin have significantly disrupted global supply chains, making it harder and more costly to buy certain carts and parts.
I’ve been writing annually about plug-in golf carts (also known as golf cars and low-speed personal transportation vehicles) for the past three years because they have become an unlikely flash point in trade tensions between the United States and China.
There’s no indication that President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping discussed golf carts at their Beijing summit last month. Nor are carts likely to be high on the agenda at the planned September follow-up.
But they represent, in microcosm, many of the issues swirling around commerce between the two nations: How China leads in climate-friendly EV battery technology. How its surplus manufacturing capacity is abetted by lower-cost labor and state subsidies. How its exports can cause financial losses and job cuts at U.S. producers. How tariffs and duties raise costs for consumers, as well as for domestic companies that use imported components. And how global supply chains can adapt quickly, by shifting production to other nations, when trade barriers are erected.
The first installment of my trilogy — call it Attack of the Chinese Golf Carts — examined how Asian brands swooped into the neighborhood market while the U.S.-based cartmakers were focused on their traditional business of selling fleets of carts to golf courses. Soon the carts made in China (or assembled in the U.S. from Chinese parts) — which featured state-of-the-art lithium batteries, lower prices, forward-facing seats and other innovations — captured the lion’s share of the billion-dollar direct-to-consumer market. This bodes poorly, I suggested, for Detroit’s ability to compete with the likes of China’s BYD in the global EV race.
In part two, The Empire Strikes Back, the leading American golf car manufacturers — Club Car and Textron, which manufactures E-Z-GO and Cushman models — filed unfair trade practice complaints against the vehicles from China. Government investigations confirmed that carts from China were being sold in the U.S. at less than fair value and were heavily subsidized by Beijing. So last year the Commerce Department imposed antidumping duties ranging from 119% to 478% and countervailing duties ranging from 31% to 679% on the imported brands.
End of story? Not quite.
Today’s third chapter, Catch Me if You Can, demonstrates that winning an unfair trade complaint is one thing, and enforcement is quite another. Implementing the sanctions has turned into a cat-and-mouse game pitting the U.S. government and the domestic golf car manufacturers against the Chinese producers and their U.S. importers.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CPB) said in April that it suspects that many of the largest importers of Chinese vehicles are illegally evading the duties through various circumvention schemes. One alleged method involves breaking down carts into individual parts prior to export. Another involves routing the carts through Vietnam and other countries.
CPB has imposed interim measures to ensure compliance and started an investigation of the importers, including ICON, Evolution parent HDK, Denago and Star. The agency is expected to issue its final finding near the end of this year. “We are hopeful Customs will ultimately make an affirmative determination and stop the evasion,” Robert DeFrancesco, a lawyer for the domestic cart companies, told me in an email.
In the meantime, local dealerships here continue to offer ICON, Denago and other popular import brands, although prices for some makes increased sharply after the trade sanctions were imposed. Evolutions, which were particularly popular in our 55-plus community, have become scarcer. The company says “we are not going out of business” but “are experiencing a supply shortage due to the complexity of tariffs and other trade barriers.”
As for my damaged fender assembly, one local dealer told me he couldn’t get a replacement but would install it if I could find one. After some online sleuthing, I located the part from a dealer in Minnesota and had it shipped to Florida.
Amid the trade turmoil roiling the industry ahead of this month’s U.S. Open championship, the same advice pertains whether you’re buying a golf cart or putting one in reverse: Pay attention to what you are doing and proceed with caution.
