https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax

It imposes a 25% tariff on light trucks -- basically anything that is not a passenger vehicle.

As a result, even foreign manufacturers build their trucks in the US (or, now, Mexico because of NAFTA).

By way of example:

Toyota builds the Tacoma in Mexico and San Antonio, the tundra in San Antonio.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Motor_Manufacturing_Texas

Nissan builds the frontier, titan and NV passenger van all in Mississippi.

http://nissannews.com/en-US/nissan/usa/channels/Plant-Fact-Sheets/releases/vehicle-assembly-plant-canton-mississippi

Honda builds the ridgeline in Alabama:

http://hondaalabama.com

Even Mercedes builds its sprinter vans in South Carolina:

http://sccommerce.com/news/press-releases/mercedes-benz-vans-invest-500-million-new-manufacturing-plant-charleston-county

For the domestic manufacturers, other than the Ford Transit Connect which is made in turkey (and imported with windows and a back seat in an attempt to skirt the tax) all light trucks are built in North America.

So GC, explain to me how tariffs don't protect American jobs?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3363945&forum_id=2#31491907)

Cars made in China or India are way cheaper, but they're also SPS quality and can't meet our safety standards. I'm glad we're "missing out" on the "welfare gain" of driving a totally unsafe truck built with low-grade steel from pirated 1970s design plans.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3363945&forum_id=2#31969853)

So think of it as a redistribution from consumers to labor in the form of jobs rather than from taxpayers (consumers) to unemployed labor as welfare payments....

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3363945&forum_id=2#31974543)

protecting jobs has a cost, especially in a trade context where there is almost guaranteed to be a retaliatory tariff that ends up gutting some totally unrelated domestic industry. in fact, your example is about that very thing. the object of the policy wasn't to protect truck making jobs. it was to arbitrarily punish foreign auto firms because their governments were trying to protect european poultry farmers.

that sort of shit is a fucking joke, and if you buy into some trumpian dream where we're going to be able to use tariffs to protect whatever we want, and somehow keep all of our export markets intact, you are precisely as dumb as liberals think you are

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3363945&forum_id=2#31491925)

On the trade war point, we are already in undeclared trade wars. Every other nation has policies in place which favor their goods over other countries. China's subsidies for its exports and restrictions on foreign investment being the most egregious. But there are many others. More importantly, the US has a huge trade deficit so any net loss in trade benefits the US by reducing that imbalance. Most significantly, the US has by far the most economic leverage of any country in the world. Put simply, the US will win any trade war.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3363945&forum_id=2#31491945)

i was for open trade, but i am not against closing it up some and just seeing what happens. it's not the type of mistake that figures to be devastating or anything like that. it may end up not being a mistake.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3363945&forum_id=2#31974295)

Profits from hundreds of thousands of Ford F-150 and Chevrolet Silverado pickups, he argues, stayed disproportionately high because any truck built outside North America had a 25-percent tariff slapped onto its price (versus just 2.5 percent on cars).

Addicted to that easy money, Detroit stopped paying attention to passenger cars. Which is easy to believe if you've driven a 2009 Dodge Caliber or 2009 Chevrolet Cobalt, neither of them remotely competitive with the best compacts from Honda or Toyota.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3363945&forum_id=2#31969652)

Anti-trust laws are there to create competition within the country, tariffs + antitrust actually applied would do a good job of keeping competitiveness in market

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3363945&forum_id=2#31969857)

In 1994 a Honda Civic was astonishingly better than a Ford Escort in every aspect: reliability, comfort, ergonomics, performance, handling, panel gaps, material quality, paint, you name it. Now it's mostly a matter of personal preference.

Even a Hyundai, the butt of jokes on late-night talk shows, isn't a total POS anymore.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3363945&forum_id=2#31969934)

competition makes products better

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3363945&forum_id=2#31969948)

Domestics failed because they never gave a damn about compact FWD cars. They were always shit cars for poors and weirdos to the guys calling the shots. A "real car" was a big V8 cruiser, which the domestic brands were very good at building. They're still great at building them. They're just called pickups and SUVs now. Japanese and European makes had way more experience building compacts that didn't suck and dominated from the 80s-early 2000s.

Now the domestic brands have finally caught up and may even be better than brands like Honda/Toyota that have rested on their reputations. I rented a Fusion recently and it was really nice. Smooth, powerful engine. Solid "European" ride quality. Good ergonomics and quality materials inside. Much nicer than a plastic-fantastic Camry.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3363945&forum_id=2#31969914)

The chicken tax saved what is left of the US auto industry. There is no reason we could not have a fuck load of cars built here in right to work states.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3363945&forum_id=2#31970233)

Toyota used to ship pick ups without a bed and had a US made bed installed once at port. Of course, those beds all rusted away ....

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3363945&forum_id=2#31974638)