Source:  Tom Johnston, MEATINGPLACE.COM, 9/21/10

The National Pork Producers Council and 36 state pork producer organizations have sent President Obama a letter urging him to quickly resolve the Mexican trucking dispute that has led to retaliatory tariffs against U.S. pork exports.

In August, the Mexican government added pork to a list of U.S. products targeted in retaliation for the failure of the United States to comply with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on the trucking issue. Mexico placed a 5 percent tariff on most U.S. pork imports.

“The tariff applied to pork will have the effect of placing our products at a price disadvantage vis a vis pork produced in Mexico and imports from Canada and Chile, two pork-producing nations that continue to benefit from zero tariffs in Mexico under their own free trade agreements,” the pork producer organizations said in a letter sent to the president on Monday. 

Last month’s action marked Mexico’s second retaliation as the issue remains unresolved. The first retaliation occurred in March 2009, when Mexico placed tariffs on $2.4 billion of U.S. products, following Congress’s failure to renew a pilot program that allowed some Mexican trucks to haul freight into the United States beyond a 25-mile commercial zone. The Cross-Border Trucking Pilot Program was started by the U.S. Department of Transportation in September 2007 as a way to begin implementing the NAFTA trucking provision, which was supposed to take effect in December 1995.

In February 2001, a NAFTA dispute-settlement panel ruled that excluding Mexican trucks violated U.S. obligations under the trade deal, and allowed Mexico to retaliate.

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