U.S. hog farmers are concerned that Mexico could update its list of U.S. items targeted for retaliation and that the new list could include pork.
Last March, the Mexican government imposed higher tariffs on an estimated $2.4 billion of U.S. goods after 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.
Recently, the U.S. National Pork Producers Council and 37 affiliated state pork producer associations sent a letter to President Obama asking 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.
As NPPC notes in a statement, Mexican trucks had been operating in the U.S. under the cross-border trucking pilot program, which was started by the U.S. Department of Transportation in September 2007 as a way to begin implementing the North American Free Trade Agreement trucking provision. That provision was supposed to begin in December 1995 and take full effect by Jan. 1, 2000.
"Congress refused to renew the pilot program or to implement the NAFTA provision, citing concerns about the safety of Mexican trucks even though under the pilot program they were held to the same safety standards as U.S. trucks and were examined and cleared by U.S. inspectors," says NPPC. In February 2001, a NAFTA dispute-settlement panel ruled that the exclusion of Mexican trucks violated U.S. obligations under NAFTA. The ruling gave Mexico the right to retaliate against U.S. products entering Mexico.
In 2009, Mexico imported more than 503,000 tonnes of U.S. pork worth more than $762 million, making it the No. 2 market for U.S. pork exports.
