I was specifically responding to an earlier post that dealt with the driving forces of Germany’s immediate post-WWII recovery.
But since you brought up the VAT, it is essentially a multi-level sales or excise tax - not a tariff. The VAT applies to all goods sold in Germany, regardless of where they are produced. The same is true for sales taxes in the U.S. If you buy a Japanese-built Lexus in Georgia, for example, you will pay the same state and local sales taxes as you would if you bought a U.S.-built vehicle. If we adopted a VAT, which many here on FR advocate, our VAT would undoubtedly apply to imported goods as well as domestically manufactured goods.
A true sales or use tax is applied at the point of sale to the final buyer, or at the retail level. That being the case, there would be no point in assessing the VAT at the point of importation of goods. That VAT on imports is adding costs to imported goods to make up for VATs charged at various wholesale or other points before something is sold to the final buyer (of new goods). But those levels of taxation have nothing to do with imported goods.
The VAT on imported goods is nothing but a tariff designed to treat imported goods as if they have been through business transactions in the VAT country prior to becoming a finished good, when in fact they have not.
Some in the US are trying to change this unfair border tax treatment of US goods:
A paragraph from the Wiki "Value added tax" entry:
Many politicians and economists in the United States consider VAT taxation on US goods and VAT rebates for goods from other countries to be unfair practice. E.g. the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition claims that any rebates or special taxes on imported goods should not be allowed by the rules of the World Trade Organisation. AMTAC claims that so-called "border tax disadvantage" is the greatest contributing factor to the $5.8 trillion US current account deficit for the decade of the 2000s, and estimated this disadvantage to US producers and service providers to be $518 billion in 2008 alone. Some US politicians, such as congressman Bill Pascrell, are advocating either changing WTO rules relating to VAT or rebating VAT charged on US exporters by passing the Border Tax Equity Act.[53]