The Chicken Tariff That Led To Huge Trucks (1962)

This Day

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2025

⏱️ 16 minutes

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Summary

It's July 1st. This day in 1962, six European countries are banding together to impose severe tariffs on imported American chicken.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss why things got so heated in the poultry industry, and how the retaliatory tariff war it set off had major implications for, of all things, the American truck industry.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day, a history show from Radiotopia. My name is Jody Avergan.
0:10.8	Let's go to the summer of 1962 and the start of the European-American Chicken Wars.
0:17.1	It was around this time that six European countries banded together to raise their tariffs on poultry from the United States.
0:24.5	Now, the context here is that Europe was trying to grow its own agricultural industries so as to protect its local farmers.
0:31.9	And at the same time, the U.S. is eager to dominate the Cold War global economy.
0:36.8	So it was not going to back down in this confrontation, this game of, what do we want to call it?
0:42.0	This game of chicken.
0:43.2	I'm very sorry for that.
0:44.7	But nevertheless, I know, boom me.
0:47.1	Nevertheless, like all tariff wars, this wasn't just about the specific item being disputed and it had all sorts of interesting ripple effects.
0:54.0	So here to discuss the chicken tariff wars of 1962 are... about the specific item being disputed and it had all sorts of interesting ripple effects.
1:00.3	So here to discuss the chicken tariff wars of 1962 are, as always, Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there.
1:03.1	Hello, Jody.
1:04.4	Hey there.
1:05.3	Cockledool-Doo.
1:06.4	Yes, we all find saying chicken tariff is just very funny.
1:09.7	It's a very funny phrase.
1:11.2	Yeah, I don't know why, but I agree.
1:13.0	Chicken almost anything.
1:14.2	It's the chicken.
1:14.7	It's the funny.
1:15.4	It's the chicken.
	...

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