The Chicken Tax

Scene. It’s 1962. American farmers have cracked the code.

We can raise chickens cheap. Like, really cheap. Industrial-scale factory farms, efficient as hell. We start shipping frozen chickens to Europe by the boatload. German housewives love it. French families love it. Half the price of local chicken. Maybe even tastier!

European chicken farmers do not love it. They’re getting destroyed. So, France and West Germany do what countries do when their people scream loud enough. They slap tariffs on American chicken. Problem solved.

Lyndon B. Johnson is President. He’s not amused. You slap our chickens? We slap back!

In 1963, LBJ announced retaliatory tariffs. 25 percent on potato starch, dextrin, brandy. And … 25 percent on light trucks?

The first three make sense. Targeted. Tit for tat. But light trucks? That was aimed at one company: Volkswagen. Their vans and little pickups were selling like crazy in the States. Detroit hated it. Johnson just gave them what they wanted: A 25 percent wall against the competition.

Here’s the thing about the Chicken War. It ended fast. Europe backed down on chicken tariffs. Trade negotiations happened. The fight over poultry faded into the history books.

But the truck tariff? That one never came down. Sixty-two years later, it’s still the law of the land.

First, let’s clear something up. A tariff isn’t some clever penalty on foreign companies. It’s a tax on us. American importers pay it. Then they pass it along to businesses. Then businesses pass it along to you. At the dealership. At the grocery store. That’s what tariffs are. A tax on Americans buying foreign goods.

That 25 percent wall around light trucks was supposed to be temporary leverage, but it stuck. It became a hidden tax we’ve been paying for six decades.

And with foreign competition locked out, American trucks transformed. They got bigger. Heavier. More luxurious. Way more expensive. The Ford F-150 became the profit machine that drives Detroit. Not because it had to compete on price, but because it didn’t.

Roll back the tape for context. An early 1980s F-150 had a base MSRP under six thousand dollars, roughly nineteen to twenty-four thousand in today’s money, depending on the exact model year and adjustment method. Even after inflation, trucks have leapt to a very different price tier. Now, seventy grand for a well-equipped pickup.

Why would Ford lower prices when the moat was there? Why would GM? They wouldn’t. That’s not how business works.

What started as a spat over frozen chicken became the permanent business model for America’s most popular vehicle.

Harvard PhD Economist Milton Friedman would have loved the Chicken Tax story.

The social responsibility of a business isn’t charity. It isn’t fairness. It isn’t “doing good.” It’s one thing: increase profits. That’s it. Maximize shareholder value. The sacred duty of a business is to make money.

From that view, what Ford and GM did wasn’t shady. It wasn’t corruption. It was textbook. If consumers will pay $70,000 for a truck that costs half that to build, your duty is to keep charging $70,000. Dropping the price voluntarily isn’t noble. It’s malpractice. You’re throwing away profit that shareholders hired you to capture.

It might even be wrong for a business to reduce prices. Voluntarily reducing prices reduces profits. And their duty is to maximize profits.

Now, you can overturn a tariff in court. You can roll back a policy. You can refund the tax.

But you can’t un-ring the bell. You can’t un-teach the consumer what they’re willing to pay. You can’t force a company to charge less when charging more is their duty.

The Supreme Court might rule the tariffs unconstitutional. They probably should. The president doesn’t have the authority to enact sweeping tariffs. It’s about whether one man can impose the largest tax hike on the American people since 1993 without Congress.

But even if the Court strikes them down, even if importers get refunds, your grocery bill isn’t going back to 2024 prices. Your furniture costs aren’t dropping. The new floor is set.

That’s the lesson from the Chicken Tax. Tariffs might be temporary. But once prices go up, they don’t come down. The damage is permanent. It begs the question: What’s the purpose of these taxes?

Why Congress, and Not Kings

Why do we tax ourselves at all?

For most of human history, we didn’t. Early humans lived in bands of fifty, maybe a hundred. Small enough that everyone knew everyone. Cooperation was personal. You helped me hunt, I shared the meat. You watched my kids, I watched yours. No roads. No armies. No infrastructure. No need for taxes, because everything was face-to-face.

Then came agriculture. Cities. Suddenly, humans lived with thousands of strangers. Tens of thousands. Millions. Our brains didn’t evolve for that. We evolved to cooperate with people we know. People we see. People in our tribe.

How do you get a million strangers to cooperate? To build roads none of us would build alone? To fund armies that protect people we will never meet? To create systems like courts, schools, and infrastructure that benefit everyone but cost everyone?

We told stories. Stories big enough that strangers could believe them together. Nations. Laws. Religions. The story of money we all believe is that a one-hundred-dollar bill is worth more than the cotton paper it’s printed on, that invisible numbers on a piece of plastic are worth anything at all.

Taxation is one of those stories. The story says we’re not just strangers, we’re a people. Americans. Because we’re a people, we pool resources. We choose to tax ourselves, to build what none of us could build alone. Interstates, the power grid, the military, the internet.

And tariffs? They’re not some foreign penalty. They’re taxes on us. American importers pay them. Then businesses pass them down. And right now, Americans are paying hundreds of billions through these tariffs. By the time the Supreme Court rules, the total bill could top a trillion dollars.

When one person can tax us without consent, we no longer believe the story. We’re not citizens anymore. We’re subjects.

The American Founders knew this. They’d lived it. James Madison, the architect of the Constitution, said, “Give all power to the many, they will oppress the few. Give all power to the few, they will oppress the many.”

The British Crown taxed the colonies. The colonies had no representatives in Parliament. No voice. No vote. Just the bill. Taxation without representation.

So when the Founders wrote the Constitution, they made a choice. A radical choice for 1787. They gave the taxing power to the American people’s representatives: Congress. Not the President. Article I, Section 8 declares Congress has the power “to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.”

That’s the philosophy of taxation in a republic. We don’t tax because a king demands it. We tax because we agree, through representation, to build something together.

The Founders believed in something higher than the Crown. They believed in natural law. Rights granted by God, not kings. Life. Liberty. Property.

Benjamin Franklin proposed a motto for the Great Seal of the United States: “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”

That wasn’t a flourish. It was philosophy. If rights come from God or nature, no human has the authority to strip them away. So when a king taxes without consent, it isn’t just unfair, it’s illegitimate. Resisting isn’t rebellion. It’s duty.

So, our choice. Citizen or subject. Representation or tyranny. Republic or monarchy.

America owes allegiance to no king.

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

But the Matter Isn’t Settled…

Of course, Congress has delegated some authority to the President over trade. In 1977, they passed the International Emergency Economic Powers Act for times of genuine crises. Freeze terrorist assets. Sanction rogue nations. That kind of thing.

But hundreds of billions in new taxes on American importers, passed straight to American families because of trade deficits? Is that a threat to national security?

The courts didn’t buy it. Not one. The Court of International Trade ruled the move illegal. Another federal court agreed. Then the Court of Appeals, three judges, unanimous, said the same thing. All concluded the law was written for emergencies, not long-standing trade policy. Letting the President tax unilaterally would rewrite the Constitution.

Congress gave itself authority to tax in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution for a reason. If Congress wanted to give the President authority to impose hundreds of billions in new taxes, they have to say so explicitly.

The Emergency Powers Act doesn’t do that. It authorizes responses to specific emergencies. Not permanent, sweeping taxation of the entire economy. Letting presidents declare trade deficits “emergencies” and impose massive tariffs would essentially rewrite the Constitution. It would transfer the taxing power from Congress to the executive branch. We don’t amend the Constitution through executive order and creative reading of a 1977 statute.

So the tariffs are illegal. Case closed, right?

Hold your horses, cowboy!

The administration appealed. The appeals court paused its own ruling. Meaning the tariffs remain in effect while the case goes up to the Supreme Court. The government keeps collecting the tax. You keep paying it. Even though three separate courts have ruled it’s unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. Oral arguments are scheduled for November 5, 2025. We’ll have a decision probably by year’s end. Maybe early 2026.

In the meantime, the government keeps collecting. Importers keep paying. And we keep paying. By the time the Court rules, the total tab could top a trillion dollars.

If the Court strikes them down, the companies that paid the tariffs will get refunds. Ford. Walmart. Target. Amazon. Every business that imported goods and paid the tax. They’ll get their money back. But the consumer? We already paid.

And even if the Supreme Court strikes down the tariffs, our prices aren’t coming down. Businesses have a solemn duty to make profits. Once they’ve established that consumers will pay $70,000 for a truck, why would you drop it to $60,000 just because your costs went down? You’d be leaving money on the table. Shirking your duty to shareholders.

The market has already adjusted. The new price floor is set. Consumers have demonstrated they’ll pay it. So prices stay high.

The Supreme Court can rule on constitutionality, but it can’t undo the price increases. It can’t force companies to lower prices. It can’t give us back the purchasing power we’ve already lost.

Is It a Win or a Loss for America?

The Court will decide whether the President had the authority to impose these tariffs. The answer, based on every lower court ruling, is probably no.

If the Supreme Court strikes down the tariffs, it will reaffirm a principle that’s stood for 237 years. Congress controls taxation. The President isn’t a king. We govern ourselves through our representatives, not by executive decree.

That’s a win for the Republic. But it’s a hollow victory for our bank accounts.

Even if the Court rules correctly and the system works exactly as Madison designed it, our grocery bills stay high. The damage is done.

The constitutional principle survives. Our purchasing power doesn’t.

And here’s the thing: Tariffs don’t even solve the problem they claim to address.

China controls about 90% of the world’s rare earth element processing. These elements are critical minerals used in everything from F-35 fighter jets to smartphones. Last week, China expanded restrictions on rare earth exports, and the administration threatened 100% tariffs in response.

But raising taxes on Americans doesn’t get us rare earth elements. It just makes Americans poorer while China still controls the supply.

Want to solve the rare earth problem? Build partnerships with Denmark and Greenland, which hold substantial untapped reserves of rare earths and other critical minerals. Work with our NATO ally to develop Greenland’s mining capacity. Invest in domestic processing facilities. Create real alternatives to Chinese supply chains.

That takes diplomacy. Investment. Strategic partnerships. Long-term thinking.

Tariffs? That’s just taxing ourselves and calling it foreign policy.

So is it a win, or a loss, for America?

Jefferson already answered that question.

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

Not rebellion with rifles. Rebellion with accountability. Rebellion by demanding our representatives actually represent us. We fire the ones who let presidents tax us without a vote. We pick someone else, even if they are from the same party. We insist that we tax ourselves only by agreement of the people. Consent of the governed. Taxing power stays exactly where the Constitution put it: with Congress. With us.

The system Madison and others put in place is resilient. But only if we defend it.

America owes allegiance to no king.

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

Music from #Uppbeathttps://uppbeat.io/t/monument-music/betrayalLicense code: NGQCJSWK1IRUMRBE

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