Other countries are not necessarily at a 25% disadvantage from the get go. Many of these trucks are built in countries that do not have the same worker(union) and environmental laws that US or NAFTA companies have to abide by. Most of them are built in places like Thailand, Brazil, and Argentina that not only have less restrictive worker and environmental laws, but the currency is much weaker than our American dollar meaning it cost even less to build than here. If anything the 25% better evens the playing field.
I would also wager that the chicken tax is probably more important to the UAW than it is to the manufacturers. After all, it was their lobbyist who helped create the chicken tax in the first place. There is nothing stopping foreign makes from building a factory here if they believe their vehicles will sell. That is what the chicken tax forced Nissan and Toyota to do and it helped out the UAW more than the big three.
