Sales tax creates more unnecessary pain than value added tax

While there are differences between sales taxes and VAT's, and while there might be an advantage to the VAT approach, I don't think the argument made in your article is correct. I'm worried that you might not understand how sales tax typically works in the US. In general, it's a "consumption tax" or "retail sales tax", paid only by the final consumer. Everyone in your example other than the final customer would have a "resellers certificate" (name and details vary per state) that allows them make their purchases without paying a sales tax. Here's one article about this type of certificate: https://www.salestaxinstitute.com/sales_tax_faqs/resale_cert.... And here's a more general article about the concept: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/vat-surcharge-calculated-648....

Am I missing something?

It's amazing to me how much movement there has been towards VAT. There's this map on Wikipedia, made a few years ago:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value-added_tax#/media/File:Co...

I think it was accurate when it was created. But when I double-checked, I found that something like half the countries had created a VAT in the meantime!