A new legislative session in January apparently will mean new efforts to keep Mexican truckers off our highways. The Texas House Transportation Committee, as an interim assignment, has been studying adding greater restrictions on commercial drivers’ licenses and stiffening English-language requirements.

Fortunately for the Rio Grande Valley, Reps. Terry Canales of Edinburg and Erin Gamez of Brownsville are on the committee, as is Rep. Eddie Morales of Eagle Pass. We trust they will properly serve the interests of their constituents and help avoid the passage of any legislation that unnecessarily hurts their districts that depend so much on cross-border trade.

They should remind their colleagues that proposed legislation apparently seeks to address a problem that doesn’t exist. Commercial trucks currently are not considered a major threat on our highways; accidents and other hazards aren’t out of line with those of other vehicles on the road.

To be sure, all drivers should be able to read and understand road signs that inform them of construction, weather-related hazards or detours ahead. Most commercial truckers have that basic command of English, which can be ascertained easily at our ports of entry.

While they aren’t likely to make our roads safer, rules that are unnecessarily strict and reduce the number of licensed commercial drivers are likely to hurt our economy and most American consumers.

The American Trucking Association in May estimated that the current shortage of commercial truck drivers is around 82,000 and growing. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, however, projects that shortage to be as high as 237,000 per year from now until at least 2034.

Such shortages have ripple effects that hurt our entire economy. According to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation, more than $100 billion worth of freight crosses our borders with Canada and Mexico every month. Trucks move nearly 73% of all goods transported across the U.S., according to the ATA.

If there aren’t enough drivers to move that freight, goods don’t get to the stores. Raw materials and components don’t get to factories. Produce doesn’t get to our grocery shelves and spoilage losses increase. All this results in lost sales, less variety and higher prices.

The inflationary spike we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic, which still has lingering effects, was largely attributed to these kinds of supply chain disruptions. They caused widespread shortages, including of necessities such as food and medicines, higher prices and delayed deliveries. Stores didn’t have enough goods to sell, factories didn’t have raw materials to operate, leading to massive layoffs among factory and retail workers.

Those metrics are starting to slide up again, after federal regulations were imposed in March that included a ban on commercial licenses for asylum seekers and DACA enrollees.

In reviewing proposals to add restrictions on licenses for foreign drivers, committee members should begin with the basic question of what problem the proposals seek to fix, and whether or not the problem actually exists. Then they should strive to ensure that any remedy doesn’t do more harm than good.

Originally posted in MyRGV: https://myrgv.com/alerts-brh/2026/08/21/editorial-restricting-mexico-truckers-attacks-nonexistent-problem-hurts-businesses-consumers/