With a few exceptions, Mexico-domiciled motor carriers are limited by law to operating in specified commercial zones along the southern border of the United States. For many years multi-national corporations and large trucking interests have worked to provide trucking companies and truck drivers from Mexico with full access to highways and freight moves in the U.S. with hopes of lower rates and cheap labor costs.
OOIDA has spent a tremendous amount of time and resources fighting those efforts on Capitol Hill and in the Courts.
In March 2011, Presidents Calderon and Obama announced intentions to begin a new pilot program to allow motor carriers from Mexico to have full access to U.S. highways.
This new program is in response to retaliatory tariffs placed on U.S. exports by Mexico for having shut down a previous pilot program. In 2007, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) had announced a cross-border pilot program that would allow up to 100 Mexico-based carriers access to all U.S. highways, and in return, 100 U.S carriers would be allowed to haul loads into Mexico. The decision was cited as a requirement to fulfill trucking provisions agreed to in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), eventually extended the program was because very few U.S. and Mexican companies were willing to participate in the program.
OOIDA opposes allowing Mexico-based trucking companies full access to U.S. highways because the DOT has not fully demonstrated proof that Mexico will be held to the same safety and security standards as its U.S. counterparts. Mexican standards are not as stringent or as strictly enforced as U.S. standards. For example, Mexico has lower qualifications for acquiring commercial drivers licenses, no certified drug and alcohol testing centers and no hours-of-service regulations.
Truckers in the U.S. must contend with an ever increasing burden of safety, security and environmental regulations and that those regulations significantly increase their cost of operations. This means Mexican companies and drivers operate for much less costs than U.S. companies and drivers, which allows for a tremendous competitive advantage. This will result in driving down rates and compensation for U.S. owner-operators and drivers.
Due in large part to OOIDA’s efforts, legislation was passed (FY09 Omnibus Appropriations bill) and signed into law that included a provision that removed funding for the U.S. DOT’s Mexican trucking pilot program.
In March 2009, the government of Mexico claimed that the U.S. was in violation of terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and retaliated by increasing tariffs on 90 products and commodities that the U.S. exports to their country (roughly $2.4 billion worth of new tariffs).
To date, the U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk has yet to question the legitimacy of the tariffs. While tariffs may be permissible under very specific provisions in NAFTA, this does not mean that the current tariffs have adhered to those restrictions and are allowable. Trade experts are not only questioning the size of Mexico's retaliatory tariffs ($2.4 billion), but also their overall legitimacy.
Mexico’s tariffs caused some American agricultural and manufacturing interests to join big shippers in pushing for opening the border to Mexican truckers.
Congressional leaders whose constituents were targeted by the Mexican tariffs have repeatedly called on Ron Kirk to fight back and challenge those tariffs, but so far the USTR has refused to do so.