Teamsters sue to stop Mexican trucking; beef export records

Washington Ag Today September 14, 2011 The Teamsters union has gone to federal court to try and stop the U.S. Department of Transportation from opening the border to Mexican trucks. An agreement reached earlier this year between the U.S. and Mexico would end all Mexican retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports to there once Mexican trucks begin crossing the U.S. border. That was expected to happen in the next few months. Those tariffs, which have been reduced, cost Washington agriculture tens of millions of dollars in lost sales. The Teamsters claim the pilot trucking program violates several laws.

Statistics from the USDA for July beef exports are in and according to the U.S. Meat Export Federation those exports set a new value record of 513 million dollars. Federation President and CEO Phil Seng explains what that means to beef producers.

Seng: “The return to the producer as a result of the exports, we are talking $230 a head as far as beef is concerned.”

Last July the value per head was $159.34. Seng says that July beef exports equated to 16.3 percent of total U.S. beef production.

U.S. beef exports to Canada set new value records in both June and July with Seng saying that Canada is now the number one export market for 2011 in terms of value, surpassing Mexico.

Washington cattle producers help fund the work of the U.S. Meat Export Federation through the Beef Checkoff.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on Northwest Aginfo Net.