[Lighter flicks]
When it comes to selling trucks,
U.S. carmakers have been blowing
away their foreign competition.
U.S. trucks are basically automotive juggernauts.
Turns out they owe that success to chickens.
Well, frozen ones, anyway.
It call goes back to the late 1950s, early
1960s.
The European economy is finally getting better
after the end of World War II,
and everyone in the world is sort of helping each other.
This is an era of free trade.
In America, people were beginning to fall
in love with German imports.
Everyone wanted a Beatle --
a Volkswagen Beetle,
that is.
At the same time, Germany began importing
cheap, frozen chicken from the United States.
Which was awesome for the German consumer,
but not so awesome for the German chicken farmers.
So the farmers got to the German government
and they say, "Protect us against this cheap,
delicious, frozen American chicken that is
flooding the market!"
And the government says, "OK, sure."
So it puts a 50 percent tax on imported frozen
chicken.
And America is like, "Wait, wait, wait, what?
Germany, we just helped you rebuild after
the war and you want to start a trade dispute?
You want to tax our chicken?
Fine.
Fine.
We will find some German things that we can
tax."
So in 1963, the U.S. goes and puts a 25percent
tariff on foreign trucks.
That includes commercial vans, light trucks
and regular old pickups.
And Germany wasn't the only one affected.
The U.S. applied it to all foreign-made commercial
vehicles.
Volkswagen, who had been planning to send
over its new line of trucks,
now found them too expensive to export.
And just like that, the American car market
changed almost overnight.
And American trucks were given a huge advantage
over their foreign competitors.
They've held that advantage ever since.
For the past 50 years, trucks have kind of
paid the bills for America's automakers.
The Ford F-150 has been one of America's best-selling
vehicles for decades.
The existence of the chicken tax has been
very profitable for American car companies.
Now, these days the world's a more complicated
place, of course.
There are plenty of American automakers with
foreign interests.
But the thing about tariffs is, they're hard
to get rid of.
Not because they're always necessary, but
because they can be used as leverage.
So in all likelihood, the chicken tax will
continue to stick around,
and America's signature trucks will remain dominant above the rest.
