What do chickens and pickup trucks have in common? No, this isn’t the setup to a joke, it’s a genuine question. The answer is, more than you think — largely thanks to wartime rationing, the transatlantic trade war, and Lyndon B. Johnson.
The history of how the pickup truck market came to be affected by what is humorously referred to as the “Chicken Tax” is a fascinating one. This tax is the reason why pickup trucks built abroad are a rare sight on American roads, and many models that are highly popular elsewhere never made it to the States. It has been shaping the automotive market for six decades now; here is how it came to be.
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