LAREDO, Texas \u2014\u00a0The thousands of trucks that cross the border into Laredo each day are an economic pillar for the city and all of Texas.<\/p>\n
The international bridges are so busy, and Port Laredo was the No. 1 overall port in the country. But since worldwide tariffs took effect last year, the port no longer holds that title.<\/p>\n
Laredo customs broker Jose Martinez says the back-and-forth over the last year has brought a lot of changes to his line of work.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes you tell [your clients] it\u2019s Friday, and if you have anything moving over the weekend, make sure it crosses because Monday, you\u2019ll be paying more,\u201d Martinez said.<\/p>\n
Laredo is still the country\u2019s busiest land port by far, but New York and Los Angeles took the top spots as shippers rushed to cross merchandise before tariffs took effect.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody that had to get rid of all their high-value stuff and get it to the U.S. quickly before anything changed, did, and another port became number one,\u201d Martinez said.<\/p>\n
Martinez says brokers are adapting to the new landscape and see a more stable future on the horizon with tariff refunds on the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow that the Supreme Court ruled, everything is getting a little more stable,\u201d Martinez said. \u201cMaybe by June or July we\u2019ll be the number one port period like we were last year.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAREDO, Texas \u2014\u00a0The thousands of trucks that cross the border into Laredo each day are an economic pillar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[3645,132,134,133,910,1570,102,138,30720,223,287,82,27,1569,835],"class_list":["post-252995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-app-national-politics","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-business","tag-ctv","tag-dallas","tag-el-paso","tag-lily-celeste","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-san-antonio","tag-texas","tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}