REPORT: Ford Transit Connect arriving in U.S. with full interiors that get stripped to comply with "Chicken Law"
2010 Ford Transit Connect - Click above for high-res image gallery
The law of unintended consequences is a funny one. Take the chicken tax. Back in the 1960s, West Germany imposed high tariffs on American grown chicken. President Johnson – a man you would not want to mess with – fought back by imposing high import tariffs on foreign made trucks and commercial vans. This is one of the reasons why there are no full-size German pickup trucks. It's also why German egg yolks are orange while ours are yellow (grass fed chicken vs. corn fed chicken), but that's another story. The only reason we have the Toyota Tundra and the Nissan Titan is because those companies decided to make them here in the U.S. Otherwise they'd be too expensive. This poses a real problem if you're Ford and you want to bring in your made-in-Turkey Transit Connect van.
How to circumvent the law? There's all sorts of creative ways. Up until just recently, Chrysler's been selling Sprinter vans here in the States by shipping them unassembled to a factory in South Carolina where the vans are reconstituted and shipped to dealers. Ford's taking a slightly different approach. They actually ship the Transit Connects here with the vans classified as wagons. Then, once they reach a processing facility in Baltimore, they are transformed into cargo vans, totally side-stepping the Chicken Tax. Smart, huh?
The process of transforming a passenger "wagon" into a cargo van works like this. The rear windows are removed and replaced by a sheet of metal that's quick cured in place. The rear seats and seat belts are then removed and a new floorboard is screwed into place. Voila – five minutes after they start as five-passenger wagons, Ford has a bunch of two-seater panel vans. The seats are then shredded and the material is used as land fill cover. No word on what happens to the glass. Long story short, take that chicken tax!
[Source: WSJ]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
AK 2:34PM (9/22/2009)
Wow, what a gigantic waste of resources and energy.
Wouldn't that glued-in panel be more likely to leak than if they had a normal, full metal panel covering the car? Or is this how they normally make cargo vans - by gluing in metal to the window holes?
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Victor 2:41PM (9/22/2009)
Hooray protectionism!
outphase84 3:02PM (9/22/2009)
They're usually glued in, with the exception of chrysler, where they're held in by clips.
James 3:26PM (9/22/2009)
The Chicken tax deserves an...egging.
Judy Zik 4:33PM (9/22/2009)
Yet another example of American protectionism and how the WTO and all the various Free Trade agreements amount to nothing because the US still likes to play bully.
ronzo 9:02PM (9/22/2009)
agreed, it is stupid all around.
jpm100 5:13PM (9/22/2009)
Firstly, the US policy is obviously circumventable. That's the point the article. There is some added cost and silliness. But its minor.
But it doesn't even come close to say France or Germany's flatout 23% cap on Japanese imports.
What bothers me is that people who bitch about US instances of protectism don't say a word or lift a finger to open markets closed to US goods.
Polly Prissy Pants 5:43PM (9/22/2009)
This isn't protectionism, this is merely a tariff, something our founding fathers were HUGE believers in. In fact their original intent was to fund the running of the federal gov't through tarrifs, not a personal income tax.
"Protectionism" is merely the negative label put on those who opposed NAFTA and other free trade, globalization efforts by those who would profit from it - Big Corporations and their political whores - and those who aren't smart enough to see the destructive affect it's had on our economy and our middle class.
the4thheat 10:14PM (9/22/2009)
The founding fathers were brilliant people, but they had a late 1700's grasp of economics. It's not like we still attempt to get electricity by flying kites with keys attached to them during lightning storms. And I for one don't care to ever have to use wooden teeth like George Washington.
Modernity has brought with it improved science, dentistry, and even economics. Back in those days the industrial revolution hadn't even come across the Atlantic and tariffs were pretty much the only thing they knew since that's pretty much how the British had run things (i.e. tea taxes).
Seriously though, it's not the late 1700's anymore and as is fairly obvious most protectionist rules are skirted, largely by jumping through resource and money wasting hoops. That new tire tax on tires from China just mean that companies like Michelin will ship more tires from their non-Chinese factories and then ship the tires from their Chinese factories to where the non-Chinese tires were going to go. They have plenty of factories to choose from, including Mexican ones covered under NAFTA:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_locations_of_Michelin_factories.PNG
No jobs are going to be brought back to the US via these stupid rules but Michelin will jump through whatever hoops they have to, to move Chinese tires to Mexico then Mexican tires to the US. Or Chinese tires to Canada and Canadian tires to the US. Or some incredibly complex and shipping fuel wasting system.
Of course you could just slap a tariff on all imported tires but then you would 1) not be able to meet your tire demand domestically anyway and cause massive tire shortages and 2) get US exports taxed in return by pretty much every one of the countries in blue on that map plus all the ones which make tires for other companies.
Protectionism is a lose-lose game-pretty much the only real way to win is to keep an edge on technology and either manufacture goods others can't (at least not affordably) or use other countries as manufacturing bases but be the technology supplier (which is really what most western nations do these days and not everyone has terrible trade deficits).
Frank 9:13AM (9/23/2009)
So... does Germany still have a tarrif on chickens? Can you buy a Purdue Oven Stuffer roaster over there, and for a reasonable price?
If not, why should we change our tarrif? Shouldn't it be a two-way street? Just sayin' Free Trade needs to be free on both sides, but that would really be Fair Trade now, wouldn't it?
gefinley 2:36PM (9/22/2009)
You'd think they'd just ship what they strip out the other direction and keep reusing it.
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The Other Bob 2:37PM (9/22/2009)
I am guessing they wouldn't get away with it then
Alex 2:45PM (9/22/2009)
My guess is the cost to ship it back is greater than the cost to produce it. Same goes for shipping containers, hundreds of thousands of shipping containers sit at docks because no one wants to pay to ship empty containers when they can buy new ones for less.
mbslrm 2:46PM (9/22/2009)
Exactly. Who knows, there might be another law preventing that.
And it would be pretty cool to buy these parts and use your Transit Connect as a wagon.
And what about Canadian-market Transit Connects?
Jake B 3:09PM (9/22/2009)
The point of all of this is that Ford should just be building the vehicles in the United States. Bang out a new union free factory or something in Alabama under a new sub corporate identity.
Chris 3:40PM (9/22/2009)
Here's a better idea, Jake: Use a union factory!
Ass.
MeiSooHaityu 4:02PM (9/22/2009)
Chris, I whole heartedly agree.
MewMewtwo45 9:50PM (9/22/2009)
Yeah, do it with a union factory, because they totally haven't completely screwed over the car industry or anything serious like that.
Oh, right.
the4thheat 10:16PM (9/22/2009)
Well for all we know the "seats" could be pieces of foam. I'm not even sure they have to prove that it's crash worthy or safe for passengers-they're merely importing them with whatever is technically required to be considered a passenger vehicle but it might not have to pass any safety rules.
Seems like a waste to knock out the windows though, why not keep them in?
Thomas 2:38PM (9/22/2009)
"The seats are then shredded and the material is used as land fill cover."
They ought to tax them for that.
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