One big reason is the so-called Chicken Tax, a 25 percent tariff on imported cargo vans. (For those unfamiliar: Back in the 1960s, chickens were considered a luxury food in Europe. The European Economic Community, predecessor to the EU, accused the US of dumping cheap chickens in Europe and hit them with high tariffs; the Johnson Administration retaliated with tariffs on several items imported from Europe. Most are now gone, but for reasons known only to the Big Three’s lobbyists, the tax on trucks remains. Automakers have gone to great lengths to get around this, from building, un-building and re-building Sprinter vans to importing passenger vans and converting them to cargo haulers. This is why cargo and pickup versions of the original VW Microbus suddenly disappeared from US dealerships in the mid-1960s.)
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