Why was there a 6% tariff on motorcycles to begin with? That tax wasn’t in response to Trump. That tax was to protect EU industry which is exactly the problem. The EU has long engaged in protectionism — when the US does the same, somehow that’s a scandal? Let’s be intellectually consistent here. All tariffs are bad except in the case of dumping.
And the US has 25% import duty on trucks, why do they have that to begin with? You can play that back-and-forth game quite a bit.
I'd be a bit more sympathetic if the US government had asked the EU to remove duties before creating new ones, but that doesn't appear to be the case. And at the same time people complain that it's totally unfair that the Canadians seek to limit imports of some goods from the US...
Commonly known as the "Chicken Tax", this was imposed by LBJ in response to French & German duties on imported chicken meat. Congress lumped light trucks into the bill because LBJ wanted the support of the UAW, who didn't like the importation of the VW Type 2 pickup as well as Japanese utility vehicles.
At the moment, the tax on light trucks is the only remaining part of this bill. And it's pretty toothless as Honda is now building trucks in Alabama, and Ford/GM are building fullsize trucks in Canada & Mexico (which don't get taxed because of NAFTA) yet somehow get classified as domestics.
I'm not sure the exact details but it was all set in Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), spanning from 1986 to 1994 and embracing 123 countries. And then I guess people kind of forgot about it. EU's trade weighted average MFN tariff was 2.3% for non-agricultural products (in 2013) and no one seemed particularly bothered about it till now.
Probably for similar reasons the US charges a 2.4% tariff (on a muuuuch higher dollar value of motorcycles since Harley is about the only US motorcycle maker).
The US has long engaged in protectionism as well - do a search for US protectionism if you think the US is somehow unfairly treated in this respect and need a list. For a long time the consensus has been that lower barriers are better for everyone, until Trump unilaterally ripped up several free trade agreements and declared (trade) war on the world.
This is a dangerous escalation from Trump which will lead to a global trade war and recession at the very least.
