The other half of this is the chicken tax. Internationally, small trucks are widely available. However the tariffs make it much more difficult for the market to bear the sale of these small trucks (vs domestic mid-size truck or imported small passenger car) in the USA, CAFE notwithstanding.

That's a factor to some extent, but not as much as the CAFE regs. Many foreign manufacturers simply produce trucks in the U.S. or Mexico. Toyota for example makes their pickups in Texas and Mexico and so isn't subject to the chicken tax.

The big 3 and Toyota all used to make compact pickup trucks. Ford has the new compact Maverick coming out next year, but even that is still 6 inches wider, 4 inches taller, and 23 inches longer than the Ranger of 30 years ago. If you look at today's Ranger, it's 11 inches wider, 7 inches taller, and 35 inches longer than the Ranger of 1991.

This does not explain the rise of SUVs though, and generally cars just getting bigger and bigger.

Average vehicles have only grown in footprint by about 4% since 2008. Weight is <10% heavier than when EPA began tracking it in 1975. [1]

Most of the weight shedding after 1975 happened in the 1980s in the immediate wake of peak oil prices. [2] Vehicle weight is just now catching up to what it was just before the ~1980 oil crisis, and current gains are far offset by fuel economy and horsepower ( there is a relationship between power, weight, and acceleration/speed available to the vehicle).

The extra 4% in outlay could very well be explained by a combination of consumer and regulatory demands for safety (all else equal, it is easier to engineer something bigger with cushion room to be safer than it is something smaller).

Ultimately it is difficult to explain away the lack of small trucks and smaller cars without accounting for the large play of regulation (safety testing, poorly constructed CAFE standards, and tariffs).

One can readily see from operators of the 125cc motorcycles like honda Grom, illegal street operators of ATV/dirtbikes, and mopeds that there is considerable demand for minimal footprint transportation. Tiny cars like the Suzuki Alto are in demand in other less regulated markets.

Our criticism should not be the presence of large SUVs and cars, who have legitimate use for large families who live off of dirt roads and those with a low risk tolerance that demands monster sized cars full of safety features and crumple zones. Rather our criticism should be aimed at questioning why the guy riding his ATV down the residential street is a criminal while the well to do person riding newly constructed 4,500 lb Tesla full of toxic metals recharged by the local coal plant is not.

[1] https://www.epa.gov/automotive-trends/highlights-automotive-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980s_oil_glut#/media/File:Nom...

I prefer a car containing toxic metals to one that pollutes my city with toxic gases that I have to smell all the time.