Tariffs imposed on U.S. exports (including pork) to Mexico should be lifted in October following an agreement that will allow Mexican trucks to haul goods into the U.S.
The Mexican tariffs on more than $2.4 billion of U.S. goods, including a 5 percent duty on most U.S. pork, will be reduced by 50 percent after the Mexican government gives public notice of the agreement and the first Mexican trucks are allowed to carry products into the United States.
The agreement resolves a long-standing dispute between the nations over a trucking provision of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The provision was set to become effective in December 1995, but the United States failed to abide by it.
In February 2001, a NAFTA dispute-settlement panel ruled that excluding Mexican trucks violated U.S. obligations under the trade deal. The ruling gave Mexico the right to retaliate, but the United States delayed the retaliation by implementing in September 2007 a pilot program that allowed a limited number of Mexican trucks into America. When in March 2009 Congress failed to renew the pilot program, Mexico imposed tariffs on 89 U.S. products. It added products, including pork, in August 2010 after the Obama administration failed to present a proposal for resolving the trucking dispute.
Mexico is the second largest market for the U.S. pork industry, which shipped $986 million of pork south of the border in 2010. Since 1993 – the year before NAFTA was implemented – U.S. pork exports to Mexico have increased by 780 percent.
Source: NPPC