Dropping the Gloves

Happy Monday. A 50% U.S. tariff on Canadian goods took effect Saturday, hitting dairy, wine, and cement among other categories. Canada decided to fight back rather than absorb it.

Plus:

• ATA's Chris Spear Is Out, Effective Immediately

• Judge Blocks CDL Data Handover

• Google Finally Builds Routing for Trucks

💡 QUESTION OF THE DAY:

The U.S. imposed a 50% tariff on roughly $___ billion of Canadian goods.

🍳 WHAT’S COOKIN’ IN FREIGHT

👔 ATA's Chris Spear Is Out, Effective Immediately. American Trucking Associations President and CEO Chris Spear left his post Friday without giving a reason, ending a decade-long tenure that was set to run through 2029 under a contract extension. ATA Chairman Greg Hodgen praised Spear for "significant policy victories" that "elevated trucking's voice in Washington." Not everyone shares that read of his legacy: for years, Spear pushed the claim that trucking faced a severe driver shortage, a narrative the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association disputed the entire time, and multiple studies since have backed OOIDA's side of that argument. ATA's board is now convening a search committee for its next president and CEO, with no timeline and no interim leader named.

⚖️ Judge Blocks CDL Data Handover. At a hearing Thursday, Judge Anthony Trenga blocked the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, or AAMVA, from providing DOT, FMCSA, or DHS with the entire national CDL database (17 million license holders across all states) while a lawsuit brought by 22 states plays out. He also barred the agencies from punishing AAMVA or the states for refusing to comply. It's a stronger order than the one Trenga issued Aug. 13. This time, he found the states likely to succeed on several of their claims. He questioned whether FMCSA actually needs the records for highway safety, or whether the real goal is immigration enforcement. Next up: a fight over a longer-term block.

🗺️ Google Finally Builds Routing for Trucks. Google Maps Platform launched Large Vehicle Routing nationwide last week, letting fleets enter height, width, length, axle count, and hazmat classification so routes actually avoid low bridges and weight-restricted roads, which is something the base Google Maps app has never done. It also compares routes to dynamically dodge tolls when that's cheaper, and calculates ETAs using a model built specifically around how large vehicles actually move in traffic, not passenger-car averages. None of it shows up on a driver's personal phone, though. It's a paid tool a company has to build into its own dispatch or driver-facing app first.

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The Trade War Is On

Trade talks between Washington and Ottawa collapsed Friday night, three days after the two sides had nearly reached a deal.

At 12:01 a.m. Saturday, the U.S. imposed a 50% tariff on roughly $20 billion of Canadian goods, including dairy, wine, cement, furniture, clothing and more.

The action falls under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, a law that hadn't been used this way in at least 70 years, according to trade law firm Wiley.

The duties cover about 5% of Canada's total exports to the U.S., and goods that qualify under the USMCA aren't exempt from them.

Canada Didn't Fold

Canada answered within hours. Prime Minister Mark Carney said the country will match the U.S. tariffs dollar for dollar starting Sept. 8, hitting American steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper products, and electronics.

"You're at war when you get attacked," Carney told reporters in Ottawa. "We got attacked."

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Saturday that Canada is one of only a handful of countries that have retaliated against the president's tariffs instead of absorbing them.

Two Sides, Two Stories

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy predicted Canada would eventually return to the table, calling the retaliation "foolish on their part." No new talks are scheduled.

Greer said the U.S. had offered Canada "the best treatment of any major exporter" to the U.S. market and framed the collapse as Canada walking away from the table with new, unspecified demands.

Carney disputed that account, saying Canadian officials had negotiated in good faith while the U.S. introduced new, unfair terms at the last minute.

Where Freight Gets Hit

U.S. Customs and Border Protection calculates the 50% duty based on when a shipment clears customs at the border, not when it left the shipper's dock, according to trade advisory firm GHY International.

That means a load that left before the deadline will still get taxed if it didn't cross the border before Saturday morning. CBP warned businesses Friday it would enforce the new rate immediately.

University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe estimates that 52,000 jobs in Canada are directly at risk from the tariffs, plus another 35,000 at suppliers and service providers, for a total of a little over 87,000.

His broader analysis found warehousing and trucking among the sectors facing those indirect losses, outside the industries actually named in the tariff list.

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Post-Montgomery, "we think we called them" won't cut it. A timestamped record will.

 🌎 AROUND THE FREIGHT WEB

📈 Bill Gates Bullish on Freight. A newly disclosed SEC filing shows Bill Gates's foundation trust opened a $180 million stake in FedEx Freight sometime in Q2, a company that has been publicly traded for less than three months.

🛑 Texas Blitz Pulls Nearly Half the Trucks Off the Road. Troopers inspected 351 trucks in Mentone, Texas, wrote 1,935 violations, and pulled 167 out of service, a 47.5% failure rate.

📦 Intermodal Savings Hit a Multi-Year High. On one major lane, truckload spot rates are up 42%, while intermodal rates are up only 16%, the widest gap in years.

⚖️ New Bill Would Force Audits of Non-Domiciled CDLs. Rep. Harriet Hageman introduced a bill requiring FMCSA to audit every state's non-domiciled CDL records after federal reviews found major errors in several states.

📬 USPS Contract Drivers Failing Basic English Checks. A new USPS Inspector General audit found that contract mail drivers at multiple sites couldn't answer basic questions in English, despite it being a contract requirement.

🎣 THE FREIGHT CAVIAR CORNER

Catch the Epay Manager x FreightCaviar live event “Scaling Like a GOAT” Thursday, August 27th, at 12 PM EST/11 AM CST over on LinkedIn.

Sign up here.

😂 FREIGHT HUMOR

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• Driver Recruiter

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🎧 THE FREIGHT CAVIAR PODCAST

Ted Alling, Managing Partner at Dynamo Ventures, and Co-Founder of Access America, joined Reed Loustalot on the FreightCaviar Podcast to discuss how he helped build a freight brokerage from a startup into a $500 million business without outside capital, the early days of Access America and the culture that fueled its growth, and how Dynamo is backing the next generation of freight founders.

Watch it on YouTube, or listen to the full episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.