Mexico remained the largest U.S. trading partner in April, extending a streak that began in 2023 and highlighting the continued strength of North American supply chains.
The surge in cross-border trade continues despite growing uncertainty surrounding the future of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) trade pact, according to President Donald Trump.
On Wednesday, Trump said the U.S. may not renew the agreement, arguing that the U.S. does not need imports from its North American neighbors and should receive more favorable trade terms.
“I’m not looking to renew it,” Trump said according to Reuters. “We don’t need anything that Canada has. We don’t need anything that Mexico has, but they need everything that we have. They have to treat us better.”
Under the agreement, the three countries must approve a renewal by July 1 or signal their intention to withdraw, a process that could trigger a lengthy renegotiation period.
Despite Trump’s comments, USMCA negotiations are ongoing. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has scheduled a second round of talks with Mexico in Washington on Wednesday and Thursday focused on agriculture and competitive trade practices. It will be followed by additional discussions in Mexico City during the week of July 20.
Mexico extends lead over Canada in U.S. trade rankings
Two-way trade between the U.S. and Mexico totaled $86.04 billion in April, up 23.4% from the same month a year earlier, according to U.S. Census Bureau data analyzed by WorldCity. U.S. exports to Mexico totaled $35.34 billion, while imports reached $50.69 billion.
Mexico accounted for 16.6% of all U.S. trade in April and ranked first among U.S. trading partners in overall commerce, exports and imports. The April total was the highest monthly trade value with Mexico since WorldCity began tracking the data in 2013.
Canada ranked second among U.S. trading partners with $64.8 billion in two-way trade during April, while Taiwan surged to third place at $29.6 billion.
China slipped to fourth place at $29.2 billion in trade with the U.S., marking one of its lowest rankings among U.S. trading partners in decades as tariffs and supply-chain diversification continue to reshape global commerce.
Overall U.S. trade totaled $518.45 billion in April, with exports of $218 billion and imports of $300.46 billion. Total trade increased 11.6% compared to April 2025.
Border gateways drive growth
Cross-border land ports continued to dominate U.S.-Mexico commerce.
Port Laredo remained the busiest U.S.-Mexico gateway in April, handling $33.35 billion in trade, a 21% increase from a year earlier.
The crossing accounted for nearly 39% of all U.S.-Mexico trade by value. Other leading gateways included the Ysleta-Zaragoza International Bridge in El Paso ($12.27 billion), Otay Mesa in California ($4.99 billion), Santa Teresa, New Mexico ($4.88 billion), and Eagle Pass, Texas ($4.05 billion).
The strength of border trade was also reflected in national rankings. Port Laredo was the busiest U.S. trade gateway overall in April, handling $34.16 billion in commerce with all trading partners, ahead of Chicago O’Hare International Airport ($33.9 billion) and the John F. Kennedy International Airport ($29.1 billion).
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On June 6, a pickup truck pulling a trailer full of fireworks caught fire on Interstate 75 just north of the Ooltewah exit outside Chattanooga, Tennessee. Passersby flagged the driver, who pulled to the shoulder. Then the load went up. For roughly 25 minutes, mortars and shells fired in every direction across a closed interstate while Tri-Community firefighters and Hamilton County deputies worked the scene. Both directions of I-75 are shut down. The video has been viewed more than three million times. By some miracle, nobody was hurt.
Then the Tennessee Highway Patrol took a closer look, and the picture got worse. THP’s Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Division, the unit it brands as Motor Carrier Plus, conducted a post-incident inspection and found that the load had been in open violation of federal hazardous materials law. The driver, Dalton Beeler of Tennessee, was transporting fireworks from South Pittsburg to Knox County without a hazardous materials endorsement on his license, without placards on the trailer, without shipping papers, without emergency response information, without current hazmat registration, and without a USDOT number where one was required. He was cited for operating without the endorsement, and THP forwarded the findings to federal regulators for possible penalties. The explosives that shut down an interstate were never supposed to be on that trailer the way they were.
Investigators believe the fire started in the trailer’s rear brakes. Read that again. A brake fire on a trailer loaded with Class 1 explosives. That is not a freak event. That is the most predictable failure mode in trucking, meeting the most dangerous cargo on the road, and the only thing that made it remarkable is that it happened on camera.
I pulled every roadside inspection from FMCSA’s database in which the shipper on the bill of lading was a fireworks company. Then I pulled the carriers hauling those loads, their out-of-service rates, their brake records, the weight class of their equipment, and the corridors where they get stopped. The data show that the truck that burned near Ooltewah was not an outlier. It was a representative sample.
A brake fire is not rare
Across the worst-performing carriers in the fireworks freight pool, the brake numbers are damning. There are more than 1,400 brake violations on record, and 334 of them resulted in the vehicle being put out of service. Two carriers own most of that total, and both of them are intermodal drayage operators, the companies that pull containers off the rail and out of the ports.
Evans Delivery Company carries 783 brake violations and 183 brake out-of-service orders. ContainerPort Group carries 233 brake violations and 51 out-of-service orders. These are the trucks that move freight on the first leg inland after it comes off a ship.
That matters because the overwhelming majority of consumer fireworks sold in this country are manufactured in China. They arrive by ocean container, they land at a port, and the first move inland is on a drayage chassis. So the supply chain for your backyard show on the Fourth begins with a container handoff to a class of carrier with a documented, repeating brake problem. The fire on I-75 was a brake fire. The data says the brakes are exactly where this freight is weakest.
One in three rides light
Of the fireworks loads in the data where the combined vehicle weight was recorded, almost a third moved on what the industry calls hotshot equipment, meaning a pickup and a trailer rated at 26,000 pounds or less. Not a tractor-trailer. A truck you could buy at a dealership, and a trailer you could rent.
A whole cluster of those combos sit at or below 26,000 pounds. Black Diamond Fireworks, Stateline Fireworks, the Phantom Fireworks western operation, a couple of towing companies, and rental units from Ryder and Idealease all show up parked right at that line.
Twenty-six thousand and one pounds is the federal threshold where a commercial driver’s license becomes mandatory. Sitting at twenty-six thousand even is not a coincidence of physics. It is a choice. It is how an operator stays one pound under the line that would force a CDL, a medical card, and the full weight of the federal inspection regime. The hotshot model exists largely to live in that gap.
The placard doesn’t care about weight
The weight consideration or gap closes the moment the placard goes up, and almost nobody seems to understand that.
Under 49 CFR 383.5, a commercial driver’s license is required to operate any size vehicle that hauls a hazardous material that must be placarded. Any size. The weight does not matter. A half-ton pickup hauling placarded explosives needs the same Class C CDL as a fuel tanker.
Fireworks fall into two buckets. Display fireworks, the 1.3G shells that go up at the big municipal shows, are Table 1 materials, and Table 1 must be placarded at any quantity. One shell triggers it. Consumer fireworks, the 1.4G product sold at roadside stands, are listed in Table 2 and must be placarded once the load reaches 1,001 pounds. Either way, the instant that the diamond goes on the side of the trailer, the driver is legally required to hold a CDL with a hazardous materials endorsement, and that endorsement requires a fingerprint-based background check through the Transportation Security Administration. The man hauling the explosives must be able to tell a firefighter what is in the trailer.
So the under 26,000-pound rental rig is not actually dodging the hazmat rules. It is just betting that nobody checks. The endorsement exists for a reason that the Ooltewah video made obvious. The man hauling the explosives must be able to read the shipping papers, display the placards, and tell a firefighter exactly what is in the trailer when it is on fire on the shoulder of an interstate.
Dalton Beeler is that argument in the flesh. According to THP, he had none of it. No endorsement, no placards, no papers, no emergency response sheet, no registration. Every safeguard that federal law builds around explosive cargo was missing at once, and the only reason we know is that the trailer caught fire on a busy interstate in front of dozens of cameras. The compliant version of this load looks identical from the outside right up until the moment it matters.
“This incident looked like a fireworks show, but it could have been much worse,” THP Col. Matt Perry said in announcing the findings. He is right, and the reason it could have been worse is that it is sitting on the violation list. When first responders reach a hazmat fire, the placards, shipping papers, and emergency response information determine whether to fight it, flood it, or run. Beeler’s trailer offered them nothing to read.
Think about the wildfires that burn millions of acres and millions of homes a year. All it takes is a spark.
The worst of the bunch
The national average for vehicles ordered out of service at roadside hovers around 18 percent. Several of the carriers moving fireworks freight run multiples of that.
Jake’s Fireworks, which hauls its own product, posts a vehicle out-of-service rate of roughly 67 percent across its inspections. POD Logistics runs 47 percent across 149 inspections. USA Logistics runs 23 percent across 647 inspections. Bukhara Trans, Excalibur Trucking, Bright Texas, 5 Star Delivery, and an outfit named, with no irony at all, Firework Trucking LLC, all post vehicle-out-of-service rates north of 35 percent. These are not whisper-thin samples. These are the rates at which enforcement looked at the truck and ordered it off the road.
The crash and fatality totals attached to these carriers reflect their entire operation, every load they have ever run, not their fireworks freight specifically. The data establishes which equipment fails inspection, and these are the carriers that fireworks companies hand their freight to.
Where the freedom freight runs
The geography tells its own story. South Carolina is the single most-inspected state for fireworks freight, which surprises no one who has driven Interstate 85 through the upstate and watched the billboards. The state is the retail fireworks belt of the Southeast, pulling buyers across the line from stricter North Carolina and Georgia, and the I-85, I-77, and I-95 corridors are where the trucks get caught.
Fireworks loads turn up at the Cajon Scales and on the Dunsmuir grade in California, two of the longest, hottest mountain descents in the western highway system. A long downgrade causes brakes to overheat, and overheated brakes are how the Chattanooga trailer caught fire in the first place. Put a heavy load of explosives on a mountain grade, and you are running the Ooltewah experiment again, just without the camera.
Every Memorial Day, every Fourth of July, every small-town fireworks night, the explosives that light up the sky arrive on a truck. The data show a meaningful share of those trucks is the lightest-regulated, least-inspected equipment on the road, operated in many cases by people who treat the 26,000-pound line as a finish line rather than a warning.
The Ooltewah fire ended with a viral video and no injuries. The next one might end on a downgrade, in traffic, with a driver who cannot tell the first responder what is burning.
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The truckload market appears poised for a prolonged period of rate hikes, as the upcycle has just gotten underway. A pronounced shift in truck capacity is benefiting large, well-capitalized carriers, while posing significant risks to shippers that failed to foster sustainable partnerships during the multiyear freight recession.
The capacity levers being pulled continue to favor large carriers. It started last year with stricter enforcement of non-domiciled CDL rules and English-language proficiency requirements, and crackdowns on shady driver schools and ELD providers.
Capacity constraints have ramped in recent weeks. Federal authorities are more strictly enforcing cabotage rules and revoking visas. Further, the impact the Supreme Court’s broker liability ruling has on driver vetting and insurance requirements is still being contemplated across the industry.
The net impact from the regulations will purge hundreds of thousands of noncompliant drivers from the industry, analysts contend, allowing carriers operating legally to recoup pricing and restore margins.
“This industry is behind,” said Spencer Frazier, executive vice president of sales and marketing at J.B. Hunt Transport Services (NASDAQ: JBHT), during a Tuesday appearance at a Wells Fargo investor conference in Chicago. “It’s been four years in a cost-inflationary environment and a rate-deflationary environment. The industry is still not healthy.”
Frazier said most fleets haven’t generated the returns needed to adequately reinvest in their networks, which has led to a steady drumbeat of carrier bankruptcies. He said that all TL operating expense lines are up roughly 30% to 50% over the past five years while rates have been on the decline.
“So, the industry has a catch-up period from a cost perspective to go through,” Frazier said.
He noted driver wage pressure in some markets, which will also have to be recouped through rate negotiations. Management at J.B. Hunt (NASDAQ: JBHT) flagged the likelihood of a cumulative 20% rate hike over the next two years at an investor conference last month.
Most carriers raised bid season expectations during the first-quarter earnings season, which ended in early May. The group had targeted low- to mid-single-digit rate increases entering the year, but a tightening supply side now has it calling for mid- to high-single-digit increases, with some shippers seeing double-digit rate hikes.
Routing guides are crumbing
Contract rates set early in the 2026 bid season aren’t holding, management teams from Schneider National (NYSE: SNDR) and Werner Enterprises (NASDAQ: WERN) said at the Tuesday event. Mini-bid activity has spiked, and some shippers have been forced to rebid their entire book as tender rejections surge.
May brought about another jump in spot rates ahead of and after Roadcheck.
Werner said one-way contract renewals have continued to accelerate through bid season after yielding mid-single-digit increases earlier in the year. The company renegotiates one-fourth of its contracts in the first quarter and roughly one-third in the second quarter. Revenue per total mile is forecast to increase between 1% and 4% year over year in the second quarter, which seems conservative given the 3.6% increase it booked in the first quarter.
Utilization has been the bigger lever for Werner.
Most public carriers have held off on equipment additions, instead choosing to increase paid miles through better freight selection, load planning and route optimization. Revenue per truck per week was nearly 10% higher y/y at Werner’s one-way fleet in the first quarter, as miles per truck increased 5.7%.
Management teams said rebid and mini-bid activity has been widespread across verticals and geographies—a signal the market likely stays tighter for longer.
“Are we going to have a leveling, or is this going to continue to accelerate?” Frazier said.
Schneider noted on its first-quarter call that contract renewals were at the highest level since 2021 as “irrational capacity” is leaving the market.
Jim Filter, group president of transportation and logistics at Schneider, said Tuesday it will probably take “a couple of allocation events to recoup price.” However, he believes the shift in industry capacity is structural, not transitory, suggesting the inflationary rate environment could last longer than in prior cycles.
(Filter will succeed Schneider President and CEO Mark Rourke on July 1. Rourke will transition to Executive Chairman.)
Montgomery ruling viewed as ‘net benefit’ by brokers with assets
The three companies said they didn’t need to alter third-party carrier onboarding procedures at their brokerage units following the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in the Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II case. (The decision widened liability exposure for freight brokers found negligent in their driver hiring practices.)
The companies implemented more stringent protocols years ago to weed out chameleon carriers and reduce cargo theft. Tech and data tools have also improved since the pandemic, allowing for vetting on an ongoing basis. The companies have culled approved-carrier lists by at least half since.
“Based on our experience, there aren’t 50,000 carriers in this country that you could vet and say that they’re safe,” Filter said.
Werner said the Montgomery decision will be a “net benefit” for its brokerage operations. It believes size and sophistication matter. It said shippers are aligning with providers that can guarantee assets and safety while providing the flexibility of a broker model.
The brokerage market is likely to consolidate further as shippers shift freight allocations and insurance carriers get more selective in underwriting risk.
More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden:
- Analysts say Amazon won’t shake LTL market—yet
- LTL general rate increases no longer an annual event
- ArcBest raises Q2 outlook for LTL, asset-light units
The post Truckload carriers eyeing multiyear rate upcycle appeared first on FreightWaves.
A political action group backed by a conservative billionaire with interests in the energy sector wants a suspended law protecting U.S.-flag shipping permanently repealed.
Americans for Prosperity, the flagship advocacy organization backed by conservative industrialist Charles Koch, said it plans a six-figure digital ad campaign urging Congress to permanently repeal the Jones Act.
The century-old law requires ships carrying cargo between American ports to be U.S.-built, owned, crewed and flagged.
President Donald Trump in March temporarily suspended the Jones Act for 60 days over concerns that the Iran war could result in price-gouging and shortages of fuel, fertilizer, and other vital commodities. The waiver, extended to 90 days, permits foreign-flag ships to operate in commerce between U.S. destinations, such as carrying fuel from the Gulf to eastern markets.
The waiver provided temporary but modest economic benefits – primarily by increasing shipping options – but did not significantly reduce consumer fuel prices in the immediate term, analysts say. The suspension also created uncertainty for the U.S. maritime industry over jobs and for carriers engaged in coastwise trade.
Wichita-based Koch Industries, with annual revenues of $125 billion, has operations in petroleum refining, chemicals and fertilizer production, areas where it would likely benefit from a Jones Act repeal.
“The century-old shipping mandate continues to needlessly drive up the cost of fuel, food, and energy for American families,” the org said in a release. The campaign pairs targeted digital advertising with a nationwide citizens’ effort writing letters to Congress to demand relief.
Trump issued the emergency waiver after Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, the gateway to the Persian Gulf through which 20% of the world’s crude oil passes.
The campaign launches as inflation and rising consumer prices for food, gas and other staples has made affordability a central voter issue ahead of the midterm elections. It follows a May 6 coalition letter urging Congress to repeal the Jones Act as part of AFP’s larger affordability agenda.
“For more than a century, Washington has forced families to pay a hidden tax every time goods move between our own ports, and it is way past time to put an end to this failed regulation that has decimated the industry it was intended to help,” said AFP Chief Government Affairs Officer Brent Gardner, in a release. “You cannot claim to care about the cost of living while defending a law you have to suspend every time families need relief. Our message is simple: with a single vote, Congress can lower costs for every household in the country. It’s time to repeal the Jones Act.”
The campaign of digital ads and grassroots efforts is focused on key states and districts, in particular members of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, “as well as senators who campaign on lowering costs for working families. The goal is to build support for permanent repeal.”
AFP said that the waiver shows a fully booked Jones Act fleet was supplemented and not displaced by foreign vessels.
Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.
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Einride’s decade-long journey from a Stockholm startup to a publicly traded freight technology company peaked Wednesday. The company began trading on Nasdaq under the tickers “ENRD” and “ENRDW.”
It comes at a pivotal time. In the EV and autonomous space, software and hardware have matured enough to support full-scale operations rather than the limited pilot tests common in years past.
Einride leadership celebrated the public debut by ringing the Nasdaq Opening Bell at MarketSite in Times Square. The listing capped a de-SPAC process that began with a deal announcement in November and ended with shareholder approval last week.
“Over the past decade, Einride has built the technology and the customer base to lead the transition to autonomous and electric freight,” said Roozbeh Charli, chief executive officer of Einride. “Our focus now is clear: continue expanding with our customers and increase automation within their networks, demonstrating that every mile we run makes the entire network more efficient.”
A Different Approach from Day One
Founded in 2016, Einride built its autonomous vehicle strategy around a cabless design. It eliminates the driver compartment entirely and forced the company to solve some of the hardest engineering challenges early.
“We took a different approach from day one,” Charli told FreightWaves in an interview. “Having a cabless autonomous vehicle that’s built for autonomy from day one — it doesn’t have a cab because you don’t need a cab if you want to drive autonomously.”
The company’s deployments in the United States and Sweden operate without safety drivers by design. “There is no room for a driver,” Charli said. “That also means you have to build your safety case from day one without relying on a human operator.”
Dutch contract manufacturer VDL builds the chassis and skateboard platform. Einride handles final assembly of the hull and computer stack at its R&D facility in Sweden. The company plans to build a similar setup in the United States.
The Land-and-Expand Strategy
Einride enters the public markets with $92 million in annual recurring revenue and more than $800 million in potential ARR. These figures come from joint business plans with its 30 global customers.
“We’ve been focused over the last five or six years on our land-and-expand sales strategy: getting in with large transport buyers, getting their transportation data onto our platform, starting execution, and deploying both our electric and autonomous vehicles,” Charli said.
The GE Appliances partnership shows how the model works. Einride began by analyzing transportation data and building a $50 million ARR joint business plan. Operations started with two electric trucks in a Kentucky pilot. The business has since grown to roughly 20-25 electric trucks and two autonomous vehicles.
For Einride, its electric vehicle and autonomous operations form a clear win-win.
Customers get immediate benefits from lower operating costs and decarbonized transport in high-utilization lanes.
At the same time, those deployments generate revenue and margins for Einride. They also build customer relationships and the operational data needed to train autonomous models and map routes, charging infrastructure, and day-to-day workflows for future driverless vehicles.
“The electric business is a line of business in itself. It’s generating revenue and margins,” Charli said. “You’re gaining a position with the customer and collecting data. You can use that data to train autonomous models while also building a detailed understanding of operational setups.”
Cost Efficiency Drives Adoption
High-utilization, repetitive freight lanes represent the strongest opportunity for Einride’s technology. Grocery retail operations, industrial shuttle routes, and FMCG flows offer the cost efficiencies that make the business case work.
“The ticket to play is being cost-competitive with the diesel solution you’re replacing,” Charli said. “We achieve that through the platform, software, optimization tools, and AI models we’ve built.”
Defense Applications Emerge
Einride has also deployed its autonomous technology on military vehicles. It has run pilots with NATO countries and the Swedish Resilience Initiative. The company equipped a Bandvagn vehicle for dual-use applications. These vehicles can maintain power lines in peacetime and handle logistics in high-risk wartime environments.
“War is an enormous logistical exercise,” Charli said. “There’s significant potential for autonomous technology in those environments, particularly when it comes to reducing risk and keeping people out of harm’s way.”
Gen. Keith Alexander, former director of the National Security Agency, joined Einride’s board to support defense initiatives.
Robert Falck, founder and executive chairman, framed the listing as validation of the company’s original thesis. “Einride started with the simple idea that freight could be done differently, and better. Today’s listing marks an important milestone for Einride and reflects the strength of the technology platform, the trust of our customers, and the work our team has done to build and scale a modern freight technology business.”
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Leading Democrats in Congress are calling for a reinstatement of a port tax on Chinese ships after the U.S. and China agreed to a mutual postponement in May.
The suspension through November 9 was agreed to by President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at meetings in Beijing, and was a key concession in Trump’s interim trade pact with Xi.
The charges would total approximately $3.2 billion annually for large Chinese-built container and bulk vessels calling U.S. ports.
In a statement, Democrats Mark Kelly of Arizona and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts urged United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer to reinstate the fees, to protect domestic shipbuilding interests.
The port charges were implemented in 2025 after an investigation found that China leveraged unfair advantages to build a dominant position in global shipping and shipbuilding.
Kelly has authored legislation aimed at reviving the U.S. maritime industry; the Trump administration later released shipbuilding plans of its own.
The strategy to resurrect the business would require tens of billions of dollars in subsidies over several decades, observers say, and that U.S.-built ships would struggle to compete on a cost basis with shipyards in Asia.
Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.
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Containers say ‘hold my disruptions’ as ocean rates surge
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Box rates soar $1,000 in one week on peak
The post But…but…shipbuilding! Democrats want China port tax reinstated appeared first on FreightWaves.
Tender acceptance rates have long signaled stress in the truckload market — but until now, users had no direct index tracking the volume of freight that actually cleared that process and moved.
SONAR’s new Accepted SONAR Truckload Volume Index (ASTVI) fills that gap. The dataset family isolates accepted truckload demand by stripping out rejection activity, giving a cleaner read on what’s actually flowing through the market versus what was simply offered.
The index is available at the national, regional, and market levels and updates daily. It covers total accepted volume, van, and reefer — with week-over-week, month-over-month, and year-over-year change metrics for each.
The distinction between tendered and accepted freight is especially meaningful in soft market conditions, when routing guide compliance deteriorates and the spread between offered and accepted loads widens. ASTVI gives brokers, carriers, shippers, and analysts a direct view of that spread without having to manually back into it from multiple indices.
ASTVI is available now to SONAR subscribers, access a pre-made dashboard here. Full ticker documentation is available in SONAR’s Knolwdege Center.
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