Apparently, a Value Added Tax is "non-tariff cheating".

From the "sales to end users" point of view, VAT and other purchase taxes can indeed be considered cheating of sorts. Look at it this way:

Germany and USA each produce a good car for $40,000 and want to sell it for $50,000 to produce a $10,000 gross profit that will result in some net profit around 10% as expected by the owners of the business.

Germany makes their car in Germany, ships it to the USA, and sells it for $51,000 plus 7% sales tax (in FL let's say, most states have a sales tax on cars in this range). So the end customer pays $51,000 + $3,570, or $54,570 in total.

USA makes their car in the USA, ships it to Germany, and sells it for $51,000 plus 10% import tax plus 19% cumulative VAT. So the end customer pays $66,759 in total. It's a lot easier to sell a car for $55k (USA) than it is to sell it for $67k (Germany), so the US auto companies sell many fewer cars in Germany than German auto companies can sell in the USA. Yet they both produce the car for $40k or so.