The Chicken Wars brought the powerful agricultural lobby in
France into direct conflict with the powerful agricultural lobby in the
United States. Not surprisingly, France, the largest poultry producer in
the EEC, was unwilling to embrace a free trade policy whose benefits
would be spread among consumers throughout Europe. The benefits of
protectionism were concentrated in France and the costs were borne by
consumers throughout Europe. Indeed, the stakes were sufficiently high
that France might have quit the EEC had not French agricultural interests been appeased.
That's from the 'further reading' link on Wikipedia.
Which is a lot younger than the chicken tax from the 1960s
For some context: it is about washing chicken meat with chlorine dioxide to kill bacteria, especially salmonella, at the slaughterhouse. It may seem ridicoulous that europeans prefer salmonella to chlorine on their chickens, but european food health and safety argues that the practice is needed in the USA due to the very unsanitary, and therefor cheaper, chicken meat production, whereas europa requires high standards during production instead of washing the end product in chlorine, and is therefore more costly. Some argue this cost difference is the major driver of the ban, and it is not an actual health and safety issue.
The US also has more lax rules than Europe has governing what food chickens can be fed. Without going into the rather revolting details, this is a legitimate reason to exclude US chicken.
At the same time, the U.S. auto industry was suffering its own trade crisis due to competition from growingly popular foreign cars and trucks. During the early 1960s, sales of Volkswagens surged as America’s love affair with the iconic VW “Bug” coupe and Type 2 van shifted into overdrive. By 1963, the situation got so bad that Walter Reuther, president of the United Automobile Workers Union (U.A.W.), threatened a strike that would have halted all U.S. auto production just before the 1964 presidential election.
Running for reelection and aware of the influence the U.A.W. had in Congress and in the minds of voters, President Johnson looked for a way to persuade Reuther’s union not to strike and to support his “Great Society” civil rights agenda. Johnson succeeded on both counts by agreeing to include light trucks in the Chicken Tax.
While U.S. tariffs on other Chicken Tax items have since been rescinded, lobbying efforts by the U.A.W. have kept the tariff on light trucks and utility vans alive. As a result, American-made trucks still dominate sales in the U.S., and some very desirable trucks, like the high-end Australian-made Volkswagen Amorak, are not sold in the United States.
"American-made" = all the labor-intensive parts are made abroad and only the final car is assembled in the US. The USMCA merely requires that a majority or plurality (depending on the item) of item content come from a member nation.
If there was a war American industry would shut down overnight.
I find it incredible that people think the government does things like this "just because." It do so because its capitalist masters demand it. Of course this is lobbying driven. The government in a capitalist society exists almost solely to bring the agenda of lobbyists into the legislature by any means possible be it via cash contributions, manufacturing consent via the corporatist media, riling people up via the pulpit, fixing elections, demonizing unrelated minority groups, threatening or even attempting coups, blocking the teaching of certain subjects in school, assassination, etc.
Its incredible to me that there's an entire political identity that borderline denies any of this happens, and instead the government itself is somehow naturally corrupt but business and the lobbying and capital owning class are all angels and saints. Everyday conservatism buys into this fallacy fairly well and this dishonesty seems to be the core of libertarianism.
Explaining this concept to some people feels like how I would imagine explaining water to fish must be. We're just so surrounded by it and it defines so much of our culture, that you can fail to see if you choose. You can just call everything government corruption from cradle to grave without asking about the source and motivation of that corruption. You can swim your whole life and never wonder why you're wet.
That's from the 'further reading' link on Wikipedia.