MEXICO CITY – Mexico will maintain punitive tariffs on 99 U.S. products but will not add any more goods or change the list pending negotiations over a new program to allow Mexican cargo trucks on U.S. roads, the government announced Monday.
Economy Secretary Bruno Ferrari said the move is a show of goodwill as the two countries begin discussing an initiative the U.S. presented last week to lift a U.S. ban on Mexican trucks.
"As of this moment we stop that rotating process" — the expansion of the taxed list and the periodic changing of goods subject to the punitive tariffs, Ferrari said after a meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk.
The Mexican government has protested the lack of access as a violation of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement.
Mexico initially levied higher tariffs on 89 U.S. products in March 2009, after the U.S. Congress failed to renew a pilot program that let a limited number of Mexican trucking companies haul freight beyond a 25-mile (40-kilometer) border commercial zone.
Last year, Mexico added 10 more goods and changed some of the products on the list after the U.S. failed to present a proposal for resolving the dispute.
The tariffs range from 5 percent to 15 percent on everything from cheese, fruits, juice and pork products to wine and toilet paper.
The tariffs have caused U.S. companies about $2 billion in commercial losses, Kirk said.
