Trucking information and briefs for Tuesday, March 4, 2025:
Imported items from Canada, Mexico, China hit with new tariffs
Replace Friday, March 7: A large portion of the tariffs imposed on imports from Canada (together with auto business associated imports particularly) and Mexico each went on pause once more, a transfer the Trump administration reprised after February threats of tariffs have been rescinded on the final minute, after briefly being in impact. Authentic story in regards to the tariff follows. It is unclear how a lot of the commerce between the U.S. and Canada and Mexico continues to be impacted, although reviews recommend as a lot as 50% or extra, notably on the northern border. Authentic story follows.
President Donald Trump moved ahead on Tuesday with tariffs on items imported from Canada, China and Mexico, sparking a commerce warfare with three of the U.S.’s largest commerce companions. Trump stated the tariffs are supposed “to fight the extraordinary risk to U.S. nationwide safety, together with our public well being, posed by unchecked drug trafficking.”
The brand new tariffs embrace a 25% responsibility on most imports from Canada and Mexico. Current tariffs on Chinese language items imposed a month in the past elevated from 10% to 20%.
China Tuesday morning nearly instantly responded with tariffs of its personal on numerous U.S. meals exports: 15% on hen, corn, cotton and wheat, and 10% on aquatic merchandise, beef, dairy, fruit, pork, sorghum, soybeans and greens.
New
Overdrive’s Load Revenue Analyzer
Know your prices? Compute the potential revenue in any truckload, analyze per-day and per-mile breakouts, and examine actual presents on a number of hundreds or recreation out hypothetical fee/lane eventualities. Enter your trucking enterprise’s fastened and variable prices, and cargo info, to get began.
Canada is imposing corresponding 25% tariffs, efficient now in response to the federal government there, on greater than $20 billion in U.S. imports, whereas an extra tariff on $86 billion price of merchandise looms and takes impact in three weeks. Mexico is anticipated to announce sanctions of its personal.
[Related: Trump’s tariffs aimed at Chinese, Mexican, Canadian imports]
As reported by Overdrive sister publication CCJ, there may be concern that the new tariffs are prone to include penalties stateside.
A spokesperson for the Proprietor-Operator Unbiased Drivers Affiliation reiterated its feedback from when the tariffs have been first put in place, albeit briefly, in February.
“Tariffs on America’s commerce companions have the potential to inhibit the restoration from a freight recession that has been acutely felt by America’s small-business truckers, however it’s too early to make predictions on particular downstream financial results,” the group stated. “OOIDA’s commerce consultants will proceed to observe the results of those insurance policies as commerce negotiations develop and can hold our affiliation members knowledgeable.”
American Trucking Associations President and CEO Chris Spear urged that, in an effort to make American “communities stronger and safer, we should additionally keep away from unintended penalties that would exacerbate one other one in all People’ prime considerations: the excessive costs for items and groceries.”
Spear added that with the success of the United States-Mexico-Canada Settlement and a development in nearshoring, “the North American provide chain has turn into extremely built-in and helps tens of millions of jobs. Imposing border taxes on our two largest and most necessary buying and selling companions will undo this progress and lift prices for customers.“
In a webinar final month hosted by CCJ, panelists stated metal and aluminum and different tariffs, if carried out, may trigger a decline in freight demand and elevated prices, being a chief driver of uncertainty in enterprise. Provide and demand for freight motion have roughly hit „equilibrium,“ stated Jason Miller, professor of provide chain administration within the Michigan State enterprise college. „It would take a surge of demand to maneuver issues out of that equilibrium“ for vital charges development this 12 months.
Tariffs, each panelists urged, have been unlikely to assist gasoline sustained demand.
For extra on Trump’s new tariffs, learn CCJ’s full report right here.
[Related: Freight analysts forecast headwinds of uncertainty around tariffs, could yield slow-growth 2025]
Invoice revived to require USPS contractor accident monitoring
After passing the U.S. Home within the earlier Congress however not progressing within the Senate, a invoice that might require the US Postal Service to extend its oversight of trucking contractors is again in Congress and has as soon as once more handed within the Home.
The Mail Site visitors Deaths Reporting Act would require the Postmaster Normal to situation laws that require the Postal Service to gather, monitor and publicly report info associated to deaths and accidents in crashes involving automobiles transporting mail. It was launched by Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-Virginia) and co-sponsored by Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky).
In Might 2023, Connolly urged the USPS Workplace of Inspector Normal (OIG) to analyze the security of freight contract trucking practices on the Postal Service. The OIG launched a report in response to Connolly’s request, which discovered that the Postal Service doesn’t have a written coverage requiring the monitoring of trucking contractor accidents and fatalities.
The OIG’s No. 1 advice was that USPS set up a technique for monitoring contractor accident and fatality knowledge and set up corresponding written insurance policies and procedures for such a monitoring system.
The Mail Site visitors Deaths Reporting Act would codify that advice by requiring the monitoring and reporting of significant crashes and fatalities associated to the transport of U.S. postal mail.
Beneath phrases of the laws, crash reviews submitted to USPS could be required to incorporate detailed info describing, at a minimal, the crash — together with the date, time, location, nature of the crash — info figuring out the contractor, variety of accidents, fatalities, and any contributing components to the crash.
USPS would even be required to ascertain a database that consists of complete info associated to deaths and accidents from visitors crashes involving automobiles transporting mail.
After passing the Home with a 402-16 vote, the invoice will now transfer to the Senate for consideration.
[Related: State bill would criminalize non-U.S.-citizen truck drivers]
Trucker’s efforts to extinguish truck hearth acknowledged
ABF Freight truck driver Matt Harris, from Ione, California, has been named a Freeway Angel by the Truckload Carriers Affiliation for stopping to assist extinguish a truck hearth throughout a horrific nighttime crash in Lakehead, California.
Matt HarrisTCA
“I noticed a glow on the horizon,” stated Harris, who has been driving the identical route since 1994. “It was the truck that was on hearth. I got here across the bend and there was hearth within the sluggish lane and diesel gasoline throughout the sluggish lane.”
He pulled over onto the left shoulder of the freeway, grabbed his hearth extinguisher and began preventing the fireplace till the fireplace division arrived on-scene. Apparently, the driving force of the truck had crashed into the guard rail however exited the crashed truck with out harm.
“The motive force of the truck was freaked out; he was in shock,” Harris stated. “The tires have been on hearth, so I put that out, after which beneath the gasoline tank. I put out essentially the most essential elements of the fireplace, by the gasoline tanks, earlier than my hearth extinguisher ran out.”
Driving a truck since 1988, Harris has seen his share of accidents on the street, however he stated he stops as a result of that’s what he would hope would occur if he have been in bother.
“Do unto others — the Golden Rule,” he stated. “That’s it.”
