Mexico Looks for Proposal to End Trucking Dispute

(Journal of Commerce Online – William B. Cassidy)

Without progress on cross-border trucking, punitive tariffs could be expanded

Mexico may expand the list of U.S. products facing billions of dollars in punitive tariffs unless the Obama administration proposes a cross-border trucking program. A Mexican government official told The Wall Street Journal Thursday that Mexico wants more than the revival of the pilot project killed by Congress last year. “If we don’t see a concrete proposal from the U.S. in the next few weeks, Mexico will exercise its legal rights,” the unnamed official told the financial newspaper.

Those rights, the official said, include expanding the retaliatory tariffs. Mexico imposed punitive tariffs on $2.4 billion worth of U.S. goods when Congress and the White House shut down a Bush-era test of cross-border trucking. The tariffs ranged from 10% to 45% and affected 90 products. Mexico is the second-largest export market for the U.S., receiving 12% of U.S. exports in 2009. Almost half of Mexico’s imports are sourced from the U.S. An expansion of the retaliatory tariffs could hit agricultural exports such as corn, rice and beans, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs said in a recent report. Read more here.