The trucking industry is being hollowed out by cheap, often illegal foreign labor, and this is bad for American drivers, road safety, and national security.

• A fake "driver shortage" story, pushed since the 1980s, has been used to justify importing workers and subsidizing driver mills, even though there is no real shortage — just low pay and high turnover.
• Many new drivers came in as fake asylum seekers, often from India, with little training, no real English, and sometimes no valid license, leading to deadly crashes on mountain passes and highways.
• These drivers are exploited too — deep in debt to smugglers, paid cash with no protections, and sending wages home as remittances that prop up other countries.
• Big firms like Amazon, J.B. Hunt, and Werner avoid owning trucks or hiring Americans by subcontracting to cheap overseas-run carriers, while old American trucking companies go bankrupt.
• Cargo theft, freight fraud, and rigged electronic logs are rampant, and foreign-run carriers are even hauling US military freight and mail, leaking sensitive data overseas.

Outlook: Trump and Secretary Duffy are tightening English rules and pushing new laws, but enforcement is weak, and without seizing trucks and removing bad operators the problems will likely continue.