Trade Policy and Tariffs Fuel Nearshoring Momentum

Cross-border freight volume along the Texas border is growing “quite a bit, and that will only naturally continue,” Cornmesser said. (Carlos Moreno/Bloomberg)

The ongoing push by businesses and policymakers to bring manufacturing back to the United States — “reshoring” — or move it closer to U.S. borders — “nearshoring” — has the potential to spur trucking activity in North America in the coming years, freight industry experts said.

In fact, transportation companies such as third-party logistics giant C.H. Robinson and less-than-truckload carrier XPO have already added services and warehouse space to support customers in Mexico that are shipping or are planning to ship to the U.S.

However, it’s not necessarily a straight line to increased volume, said Jay Cornmesser, C.H. Robinson’s vice president of Mexico cross-border services.

“Nearshoring and reshoring take time,” he noted. “It’s typically a three- to five-year span to get things up and running.”

Nearshoring companies are investing to create “sourcing hierarchies” that include friendlier countries with more favorable tariffs, Cornmesser added. “It’s about where you’re pulling all your products from, whether [those are] raw materials or finished goods.”

Nearshoring and reshoring are happening incrementally so the impact on trucking demand will likely be spread out rather than immediate, Cornmesser said, noting that manufacturing is just one piece of the puzzle.

C.H. Robinson introduced a cross-border service in September that it said combines freight consolidation in Mexico, cross-border transport, customs brokerage and bonded warehousing with a network of carriers and “AI-optimized delivery” across the U.S. and Canada.

The logistics firm also added more than 450,000 square feet of warehousing and cross-docking space in El Paso, Texas, near Chihuahua, Mexico’s top export state.

Exports out of Chihuahua were up 35% in the first half of 2025 compared with the same period the year before, Cornmesser said, citing data from Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography.

Image

Cornmesser 

“We’re seeing primarily high-tech freight, but there’s also some healthcare and automotive mixed in there,” he said.

Cross-border freight volume along the Texas border is growing “quite a bit, and that will only naturally continue,” Cornmesser said.

Laredo, Texas, will continue to be the primary crossing between Mexico and the U.S., he said, also citing freight growth at another major border crossing about 125 miles to the northwest at Eagle Pass, Texas.

Tony Graham, president of XPO’s west division, said companies are not only bringing production closer to home in response to tariffs, but also to reduce geopolitical risk, simplify their supply chains and take advantage of state and federal incentives.

Image

Graham 

“Taken together, we believe these are all tailwinds for the LTL industry,” he said, adding that the current reshoring and nearshoring trends will continue.

In 2024, XPO launched XPO Mexico+ to add more capacity, destinations and border crossing points with features such as real-time visibility, bilingual customer service support, online quoting and single invoices.

U.S. manufacturing and domestic trucking go hand in hand, Graham said.

“When companies move production stateside, demand for freight transportation rises because both raw materials and finished goods need to move on American trucks,” he explained.

LTL Outlook

Less-than-truckload carriers are especially well-positioned to benefit from a resurgence in U.S. manufacturing, Graham said. While cross-border and ocean shipping often require full trailer or container loads, which favor truckload or intermodal, domestic production creates a different dynamic, he said.

“Manufacturers want to bring in raw materials efficiently and get finished products into customers’ hands quickly, which can lead to more frequent, smaller shipments in both directions,” he said.

U.S. manufacturing growth hasn’t been spread evenly across regions or industries, Graham noted. Most of the new activity has been concentrated in the Southeast and Midwest, especially in semiconductors and electric vehicles, spurred by federal legislation and tariffs.

Image

(Cheney Orr/Bloomberg)

“Freight patterns reflect these manufacturing trends,” he noted. “Demand for LTL transportation has risen in Indiana, Tennessee, North Carolina and Texas as manufacturing has expanded there.”

Graham added that XPO has increased its capacity in those states, opening new service centers over the past two years to keep pace with the increase in cross-border LTL demand from a wide range of industries like heavy machinery, household appliances and automotive parts.

The majority of XPO’s cross-border business is for freight traveling northbound from Mexico’s “Golden Triangle,” a manufacturing hub connecting Monterrey, Guadalajara and Mexico City. From there, most shipments cross the border at Laredo, which is the busiest truck port between the U.S. and Mexico and the location of one of XPO’s largest service centers. In 2024, XPO also opened a new service center in Nogales, Ariz., to support increased cross-border shipping.

Trade Expectations

The shift toward nearshoring and reshoring has been a long time coming, said Jorge Martinez Madero, CEO of Fultra, parent company of East Trailers and Fruehauf.

Madero said the trend gained momentum in the first Trump administration, with the “decoupling” from China.

“The second Trump administration has obviously been more blunt in trying to reconfigure the trade flows [and] maintain long-term competitiveness in the region,” Madero said.

Capital expenditures associated with nearshoring and reshoring themselves generate initial freight movements, Madero pointed out.

“The first one is bringing in the material, building the facility, moving the equipment, and then the parts,” he explained. “Eventually you have the finished goods. Trucking benefits from capex in the region. And I would argue that the region is North America.”

Madero added that U.S.-Mexico trade policy is going to be very important to simplifying matters such as certificates of origin and reducing the impact of tariffs. He stressed a need “to look into how to make it simple. Because right now, it is very complex.”

Reshoring will change the patterns of U.S. domestic trucking, Madero said, adding that it’s going to be more lane specific and dependent on the type of products.

“That’s what’s going to be insulated from all these tariffs,” he said, noting that the intermodal sector will benefit from rail freight coming from Mexico.

Chris Olson, president and CEO of East Trailers, pointed to raw material moves in the U.S. as infrastructure demand builds for industrial parks and new factories. He anticipated that those demands would impact trucking activity by the second half of this year.

“I think there’s going to be a spike,” he said.

East Trailers and its parent company, Fultra, based in Monterrey, Mexico, are going through a version of reshoring of their own.

“We have products that are made in the United States and products that we make in Mexico,” Olson said. “We’re bringing some of that manufacturing here to the United States, because transportation equipment is large and there’s a significant cost of the finished goods.”

To reduce costs, Olson said, manufacturing must be closer to the point of consumption. East Trailers plans to begin that process this year, not by shifting its existing manufacturing, but by replicating it in the U.S.

The company owns patents for trailers it makes in Mexico and that intellectual property doesn’t cost anything to move, Olson said. The plan, he said, is to hire U.S.-based workers to work in U.S.-based facilities expanded by U.S.-based contractors, and build products that already have proven themselves in the Mexico market in the U.S.

Because Mexico’s roadways are demanding, transportation equipment manufactured in Mexico is considerably more durable, Olson said. Offering that equipment to the U.S. market provides extra value as operators can get more life out of the equipment, he said.