The chicken tax encourages creative workarounds more than domestic production. Importing all the parts and putting them together in the US is production work, so fine. Importing chassis cab and putting a bed on in the US is silly, importing with seats discarded in the US is wasteful (Ford got dinged, but I don't think others did?)

Who's making small cargo vans domestically? Nobody. So they're all 25% more expensive, so you might as well buy a big cargo van when a small one would do.

Honestly, governments buy enough light trucks, that 'buy american' requirements would likely keep at least one company making them here.

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reliabilityguy 3 days ago | parent [-]

Chicken tax was introduced earlier than all the “relaxation” of what is considered “American”. The definition of “made in USA” became more flexible for products to be considered domestic while de facto being made somewhere else, hurting domestic manufacturing.

So, it’s not that the tax doesn’t work, the issue is all the things around it that made it less effective.

	▲	toast0 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Chicken tax was enacted in 1964; Ford and Chevy were tariff engineering in 1972, importing trucks without beds and putting beds on in the US. Finding loopholes and driving trucks through them is what's considered American. It's not a relaxation. At the end of the day, the chicken tax reduces our options in the vehicle market as it was designed to do, and it's one thing if we want to exclude WV vans and trucks when we have plenty of nice options at home, but now that we don't have nice options at home, it would be nice to be able to import them without a punative tariff.