Basically, U.S. tariffs undercut the competition from foreign producers who specialize in smaller pickup trucks. American companies have always dominated the large truck market, so the lack of competitors helped them cement their dominance. Speaking of unintended consequences, the federal government’s bizarre emission rules also led to the public’s preference for larger SUVs and trucks.

Regulations promulgated during the Obama administration required cars “to meet tougher emissions and mileage targets than light trucks—a category that includes pickups and many so-called crossover vehicles that look like SUVs but have the mechanical underpinnings of cars,” according to a 2020 Reuters report. As a result, car makers offered more vehicles that conformed to less-rigid light-truck standards.

The panoply of regulatory rules, labor standards, tariffs, and taxes also drive up manufacturing costs, which means car makers need to maximize profit per unit. That offers more incentive to push the priciest vehicles possible. Often, Detroit is fine with additional regulations, which cuts out upstart and foreign competitors. That’s not market failure, but government failure. So those seriously concerned about massive pickups should consider less regulation rather than more of it.

[Regulations create incentives and disincentives, and those can trend toward the perverse. That’s definitely true in auto regulation, as Greenhut notes here. The reason we don’t have a good selection of affordable and smaller pickups is … LBJ and chicken. No, really. Greenhut lays out the origins of this issue as well as the problem of zombie regulation and zombie tariffs. — Ed]