The REAL Real Man wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 10:36 am
Tdarcos wrote: Thu Jan 26, 2023 11:39 pm
"It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again."
You can skip to 4:55... We finished that last take and Dan, our videographer, just about killed himself laughing. I didn't think it was *that* funny, but it was kinda funny.
Well, after you introduced yourself and your guest star, the transit van, you mentioned the "truck tax," (see below) which is why European vans are often better than US ones, so I decided to skip forward, because, I wanted to see what ridiclous thing Mr. Aaron Gold was going to do. So, at one point, you proceeded to put lotion on your hands. Well, let's see, it looked hot out, you were handling equipment, and wanted your hands to stay soft: salesmen often have soft hands. So I agree, I didn't think it was humorous at all.
Now I had heard about the "van tax," but is more like the "chicken tax." In 1964 the US imposed a 25% import tax on European light trucks in retaliation for Europe imposing import duties on chicken from the US. Since then, most import duties have fallen to about 2%, but the "chicken tax," remains, plus the US auto industry lobbies to keep the tariff. The tariff doesn't apply to passenger vehicles, or unassembled vehicles shipped as parts, so interesting ways were used to get around it.
Since you mentioned the Transit Van in your video, Wikipedia has a
very interesting item about Ford circumventing the very tax they lobbied to keep in place. They took European-made vans, put in seats with seat belts, and rear window glass to get the trucks classified as passenger vans, with a 2.5% tariff, then removed these things, destroyed them, added plating, and sold the vans as trucks. While this stunt cost Ford a few hundred dollars per truck, Customs & Border Protection estimated this saved Ford about $250 million in import duties. I thought it was a slick scheme, but unfortunately, Ford got caught.
