But it did not and does not protect them from foreign competition. As a said before, there have been several foreign companies that competed in the truck market since the inception of the chicken tax selling similar vehicles to those they sell in other markets. These trucks did not sell well because they were not what most US truck buyers wanted. There is also nothing stopping foreign competition from building trucks here like Nissan and Toyota have done so the only one it really protects is the UAW and American workers because it forces manufacturers to build here if they want to sell here.
Another reason why I think the UAW wanted the tariff on trucks is because they probably knew that a manufacturer will not build a truck overseas just to sell in the NA market. With a car that has demand in multiple markets, you can spread out R&D and production costs in all markets so a tariff would not do much in protecting American factory jobs. With our full size trucks, however, the only major market is NA so you cannot spread these costs to any other market. It would be more cost efficient to build them in the US which creates and/or protects more factory jobs.
