Truckers from the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) today notified Congressional leaders that they are opposed to the large-scale House spending package that President Trump calls a “Big Beautiful Bill,” saying it would hike taxes on their 150,000 small-business and professional drivers.
In an open letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson, OOIDA said it opposes the House’s reconciliation package in its current form. “Not only does the legislation include a new and unnecessary tax on small trucking businesses, it makes permanent policies from the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act (TCJA) that increased employee drivers’ tax burden and unfairly denies them new tax relief provisions that benefit all other blue-collar workers,” the letter from OOIDA President and CEO Todd Spencer said.
“For American truckers, whether owner-operators or employee drivers, this bill surprisingly looks far from beautiful. Not only has the House failed to include trucker’s top priorities, some of which we have been imploring legislators to remedy since 2017, but you have astonishingly included new taxes on our members. Regrettably, we are forced to oppose the legislation in its current form,” Spencer said.
The letter from truckers came the same day that the American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA) urged the Trump Administration’s U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to consider alternatives to steep tariffs on Chinese-made cranes.
The group has been opposed to that policy since the White House first announced it, saying the plan does not include any alternative source for obtaining the huge container-hoisting cranes, so they would be forced to pay the entire 100% tariff on Chinese manufactured ship-to-shore (STS) material handling equipment.
Today, AAPA President and CEO Cary Davis repeated that position when he testified in a hearing before the USTR. “Applying a new 100% tariff to Chinese STS cranes will not create a domestic crane manufacturing industry out of thin air,” Davis said. “It will only increase costs for public port authorities.”
While AAPA said it is generally supportive of policy efforts to reshore manufacturing of key industries and products, the group insisted that the new tariff would not serve its stated goal because there are no alternative domestic manufacturers of STS cranes. “Raising tariffs on Chinese cranes another 100% will not magically revitalize an American crane manufacturing industry that has been nonexistent for decades. It will however, force public port authorities to pay more for the cranes already ordered or that they must order soon to replace aging equipment or outfit new terminals,” Davis said.
