Making Strides on Capitol Hill

“Shoe-leather lobbying” — a term that means using basic or old-fashioned methods — has been the focus of the RV Industry Association (RVIA)’s Government Affairs team under Jason Rano’s charge. As vice president of government affairs, he’s leading efforts to rally influential leaders in the U.S. Congress to support issues that matter to all players in the RV industry.

RV PRO sat down with Rano and RVIA Executive Vice President James Ashurst to discuss June’s RVs Move America Week and the issues under close watch.

RV PRO: Tell us about RVs Move America Week — how did everything go?

Rano: In general, the meetings were really positive. We were focused on four priority issues this year. The EXPLORE Act or outdoor recreation package probably has the greatest chance of getting over the finish line this year. That’s bipartisan and really the House and Senate are just working through some technical differences in the two bills. And then our other focus is on the tax and trade front. So, on the tax front, we remain committed to getting a fix to the dealer floorplan loan interest tax deduction issue. The problem we always face is it’s only us, and so it’s real shoe-leather lobbying by us and the dealers to get people to pay attention to it.

Can you explain more about the issue with the Travel Trailer and Camper Tax Parity Act?

Rano: We’ve been highly focused over the last two years on garnering support for that legislation. Next year is, depending on who you talk to, it’s either the tax Super Bowl or “taxmageddon,” neither of which sound very exciting. But the vast majority of the tax cuts that were included in the 2017 legislation are scheduled to expire next year. So, there’s going to be a huge focus on extending some of those next year. We are ramping up for that this year, getting more co-sponsors onto that legislation so that leadership feels the importance of it and feels almost required to include that in any tax legislation next year.

Then, on the trade front, we are still focused on generalized system of preferences, GSP. We’ve got a good bill that passed out of the House Ways and Means Committee. It’s getting caught up a little bit in politics. It passed out of the committee with only Republican support, not because Democrats don’t support it, but because they’re using it as leverage to include something else — Trade Adjustment Assistance, which is not super relevant to this issue. But as often happens in Congress, both parties, they’ll use legislation that’s moving as a leverage point. Our big focus is not only to get bipartisan support for that, but to make sure that the legislation includes retroactivity, which has always been a part of it, continues to be a part of it. And then last, but not least, is kind of a new issue for the Association to take on, which is the de minimis loophole. This is something that our aftermarket members really brought to our attention in the last year.

Can you explain the de minimis loophole?

Rano: The easiest way to think about it is that there is an allowance for a package coming into the country to one recipient that is under $800 in value. This was established long before the rise of e-commerce. So, the amount of packages that are coming in has exploded. This is an issue across industries: apparel, sporting goods, everything like that. For our aftermarket folks, our American companies, the RV Industry Association members are paying the duties and tariffs, so it puts them at a significant financial disadvantage. The other concern is user experience. If you buy a Chinese knockoff and it breaks after two times, you don’t know necessarily that you bought the cheap Chinese knockoff. As we all know, the RV lifestyle is discretionary, and so it is important that the customer experience be thought of first and foremost, and if customers have a bad experience because of some bad product, that’s harmful for the entire industry.

Ashurst: The other thing that another aftermarket company brought up was, let’s say that you’ve got an air conditioner and a component within the air conditioner was to go bad. You could go online and purchase a knockoff component of that air conditioner. If you’re a handy person and you do the repair yourself, well then, that cheap component two months later breaks, you end up taking it to the dealer and all of a sudden, you’re not under warranty anymore because you used a different component within that part.

So, it’s confusing to the consumer. There are a lot of ways to get to a solution, and we support the legislation that’s currently out there right now, but we feel a lot more needs to be done to level the playing field. That’s our push on this — let us play equally in this area because it’s so stacked against us right now. It’s really damaging to not only American companies, but to American consumers.

Rano: The good news is there’s a bipartisan support for a solution out there. There are very few things that bind Congress together anymore — anti-China sentiment is one of them. We’re very realistic that we’re going to be playing whack-a-mole here. There’s a lot of different solutions. Two specific solutions are taking China out of the program and lowering the $800 threshold. For our industry, that threshold would have to go pretty low to be effective. But there’s all sorts of solutions out there. We’re supportive of a bill that the House Ways and Means Committee passed, but with the caveat that that is a first step and there will need to be more done.

Tell us about attendance at RVs Move America Week — and what was the sentiment?

Ashurst: We have over 30 standing committees, and during the week we had 16 committees that met in person. Most of our committees meet multiple times during the year., but this is the one time that we get this many members together to talk through various issues that are impacting different segments of the industry. I think the biggest takeaway for us was just how pleased we were with the number of people that were able to be there. We had just under 240 attendees. In a soft market like this, one of the first things that gets cut is travel. So, to have that size of attendance really showed us how important the work is that these committees do and how much this event has become an important part of the calendar each year. We were really pleased with the level of participation. I think we had 138, including staff delegates, that went up on the Hill and had over 107 meetings with legislators both on the Senate and House side.

The key takeaway from us was it’s not just our members — we had our dealer partners there, there were representatives from the campgrounds there as well, all helping to drive the direction of the industry. And that collaboration and that partnership — Craig [Kirby, RVIA president and CEO] talks about it all the time — we’re so much stronger when we’re unified and, yes, we have competitive issues from time to time and things that we don’t see eye to eye on. But 99% of the time we’re on the same page and getting us together, reminding us of that, and then going on the Hill with a unified voice really shows the power and the size of our industry to lawmakers. And we’ve already had a couple of instances based on the meetings that we did in Washington where lawmakers have scheduled meetings back in their districts with our member companies where the lawmakers want to come and see those companies firsthand. So that shows that we’re making a difference.