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.

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.