Last March, the Mexican government imposed higher tariffs on an estimated $2.4 billion of U.S. goods after the U.S. Congress failed to renew a pilot program that allowed a limited number of Mexican trucking companies to work beyond the 25-mile commercial zone that was created in the United States. Now, with rumors the Mexican government may update its trade retaliation list, the National Pork Producers Council and state pork producer organizations are urging the Obama administration to resolve the trucking dispute.
In a letter to President Obama, NPPC and 37 state producer associations asked that the U.S. government live up to a provision in the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement that allows Mexican trucks to haul freight into and out of the United States. Mexican trucks had operated in the United States under the Cross-Border Trucking Pilot Program as a way to begin implementing the NAFTA trucking provision.
NPPC president Sam Carney, a pork producer from Adair, Iowa, says this trucking issue needs to be resolved. Mexico is an important market for U.S. pork, which right now isn't on the retaliation list, but it could be. More importantly, Carney notes, this needs to be resolved so other trading partners have assurance that the United States will live up to its trade obligations.
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