Free Trade Made Surfboards Cheaper and Killed the Shaper Down the Street
The honest accounting of globalisation for California’s surf industry
The Economics Nobody Wanted to Have
SAN CLEMENTE, CA — American surfboard manufacturing has declined from approximately 90 percent of US market share in 1990 to under 15 percent today, as foam blanks, finished boards, and surf accessories have shifted production to China, Thailand, and Vietnam where labour costs are a fraction of California rates. The boards are cheaper. Many are good. The shapers who made boards in San Clemente, Huntington Beach, and Encinitas have retired, relocated, or pivoted to custom work at price points that price out the market they used to serve.
This is the honest accounting of free trade in a specific industry: consumers benefit from lower prices, incumbent producers bear concentrated costs, and the aggregate welfare calculation is genuinely positive in ways that don’t comfort the shaper who lost his business. Both things are true. Libertarian economists who acknowledge only the first truth and dismiss the second are not being honest about what free trade does to specific communities.
What Remained
High-end custom shaping survived globalisation better than volume production. A Kelly Slater-model board from a respected shaper commands a premium that cheap imports cannot erode, because part of what is being purchased is provenance, relationship, and craft rather than just a foam-and-glass implement. The market segmented: commodity boards went offshore, premium custom work stayed onshore, and the middle market — the $500-800 board that a competent but not elite surfer buys — largely left California.
The Cato Institute’s free trade research correctly documents the consumer gains from trade liberalisation. The Institute for Justice’s work on small business regulatory burdens documents the domestic obstacles that compound import competition for small manufacturers. Both analyses are relevant. The history of surfboard manufacturing is a case study in what trade policy actually produces when it meets a specific industry over time. The boards are cheaper. The question of whether that’s the whole story is a values question, not an economic one.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
