Por Renan Filho · 2026-09-23The golf cart industry isn’t the first sector that comes to mind when Americans debate Chinese competition. Yet this modest corner of U.S. manufacturing — roughly $4.5 billion in annual domestic sales — offers a revealing case study in how trade, regulation, and corporate strategy interact. The lessons apply directly to the broader anxiety about China ‘stealing’ American jobs.
At the center of the story are three major U.S. producers: Club Car (headquartered in Augusta, Georgia), Yamaha Golf-Car (with its main U.S. facility in Newnan, Georgia), and E-Z-GO (a Textron subsidiary based in Augusta). Together they have dominated the market for decades, supplying golf courses, resorts, and retirement communities. But in the last decade, Chinese manufacturers such as Zhejiang Huitong and Shenzhen Shifu have flooded the U.S. market with electric carts priced 30 to 40 percent below domestic equivalents.
According to data from the U.S. International Trade Commission, imports of Chinese-made golf carts rose from 18,000 units in 2015 to over 210,000 units in 2025. That surge has cost the three American firms an estimated 3,200 production jobs, mainly in Georgia and South Carolina. Yet the story doesn’t end with a simple narrative of unfair trade.
What the data actually shows is that the most severe job losses occurred in firms that failed to adapt. Club Car, for example, responded to the Chinese challenge by accelerating its shift toward low-cost overseas assembly, relocating part of its production to Mexico and Vietnam. E-Z-GO, by contrast, invested heavily in automation and product innovation — lithium-ion batteries, fleet management software, and customizable luxury models — and actually grew its U.S. workforce by 7 percent between 2019 and 2025, according to Textron’s annual filings.
The real threat, then, isn’t Chinese imports per se. It’s the combination of U.S. regulatory burdens and corporate myopia. A study from the American Action Forum estimated that federal and state environmental compliance costs add about $2,800 to the production of each American-built golf cart — a figure that largely explains the price gap with Chinese imports. Additionally, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s evolving ergonomics mandates and the Environmental Protection Agency’s volatile emissions rules have forced small U.S. component suppliers to either consolidate or close.
None of this excuses China’s use of state subsidies and intellectual property theft. A report from the U.S. Trade Representative in 2024 documented that Chinese manufacturers of electric golf carts benefited from at least $320 million in direct government grants and preferential loans over the previous five years. That is real market distortion, and it demands a calibrated response — not blanket tariffs, but targeted trade remedies that avoid punishing American consumers and downstream industries.
Why this matters goes far beyond fairway vehicles. The golf cart industry mirrors the broader U.S. manufacturing experience: firms that innovate, automate, and focus on high-value niches survive; those that rely on low-skill assembly lines and outdated processes lose to China. Between 2017 and 2025, U.S. manufacturing employment actually rose by 1.1 million jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, even as imports from China grew. The sectors that thrived — aerospace, medical devices, advanced machinery — are precisely those where American firms lead on technology and quality.
The FORTIS analysis is straightforward: free markets, not protectionist walls, remain the best path to American prosperity. However, free markets require a level playing field. The U.S. should vigorously challenge Chinese subsidies through the World Trade Organization and impose targeted tariffs that mirror the harm — but not a 25 percent surcharge on every cart that arrives, which would simply inflate prices for consumers and hurt the hospitality industry. A smarter approach is to reduce domestic regulatory costs. Scrapping the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate, streamlining environmental reviews, and eliminating outdated occupational licensing for assemblers would lower the cost of making carts in America by an estimated 15 percent, according to a 2025 Heritage Foundation analysis.
A counterpoint comes from the Economic Policy Institute, which argues that no amount of regulatory reform can offset China’s wage advantage — an average of $4.50 per hour versus $26.50 in Georgia. The group calls for aggressive tariffs and ‘Buy American’ mandates for golf carts used on federal property. But this ignores the fact that U.S. golf cart manufacturers that invested in automation now report labor costs as only 12 percent of total production costs, down from 28 percent a decade ago. Automation, not isolation, is the sustainable answer.