Midterms Could Reshape 3PL Costs: Tariffs, Brokers, Drivers in Play

Up to 437,000 truck drivers could exit the U.S. labor pool over two to three years under current federal rules — and on November 3, American voters will choose the Congress that decides whether those rules survive. That is the stark backdrop Armstrong & Associates lays out in a new analysis warning third-party logistics providers that the mid-term elections will shape their cost base and demand picture through 2027.

Every seat in the U.S. House and one-third of the Senate is on the ballot. Logistics policy is not directly before voters, but the decisions that define 3PL economics for the next two years are: tariffs and trade policy, highway and infrastructure funding, freight broker liability, and driver supply and labor.

What are the three scenarios?

Armstrong & Associates frames the outcome in three basic cases:

• One party controls Congress and the White House: current trade and regulatory policy continues, with better odds for a highway bill and freight broker liability reform passing on the President's terms.
• Split Congress: more oversight of tariffs and FMCSA rules, fewer new laws, and a higher chance of another short-term highway extension.
• Either outcome: tariffs remain largely an executive-branch decision, so 3PLs should plan for continued trade volatility in 2027 and keep contracts flexible.

The results should be clear by the day after the vote, the analysis notes, citing America's long tradition of free and fair elections and no significant fraud finding in national counts by modern courts.

Tariffs stay in the White House

Since the Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA-based tariffs and the Section 122 surcharge expired on July 24, tariff policy has migrated to Section 301 and Section 232 actions. Neither requires a congressional vote, so the executive branch keeps the lever regardless of who wins.

What changes is oversight. A Congress controlled by the President's party is less likely to curb tariff authority; a split Congress brings hearings and pressure for tariff exemptions — and more uncertainty for importers. That uncertainty drives stop-and-go ordering, which helps freight forwarders and warehouse operators in the short term but makes planning harder for everyone.

Highway bill is the vehicle for broker rules

The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act's highway and transit authorization was set to expire September 30 until Congress passed a short-term extension running to December 11. The next long-term bill will be written either by the outgoing Congress in its final weeks or by the new one in 2027 — and it is where highway funding, truck size and weight, driver training, and freight broker rules get decided.

Broker liability is the sharpest live issue. On May 14, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II that freight brokers can be sued under state law for negligently selecting a carrier. Brokers are now pressing Congress for a federal carrier-selection standard, and the highway bill is the most likely vehicle. The next Congress's makeup will determine whether liability exposure stays a patchwork of state-by-state lawsuits or gets a national standard.

Drivers, labor and fuel tighten capacity

The FMCSA's non-domiciled CDL rule and stricter English-proficiency enforcement are already shrinking the driver pool. J.B. Hunt estimates between 214,000 and 437,000 drivers could be affected over two to three years — roughly one to two drivers out of every hundred in a U.S. trucking workforce measured in the millions, but concentrated in specific lanes and segments.

Layer on record diesel prices — $6.53 a gallon in the week of September 21 — and truckload capacity is tightening, pushing rates up. These are regulatory actions, but Congress controls the budget and oversight that determine whether they continue unchanged. Immigration policy works on warehouse labor the same way, and the Value-Added Warehousing and Distribution sector depends heavily on hourly workers.

The promise of clarity lasts about a day. After that, 3PLs face a lame-duck highway fight, a tariff regime that no election can restrain, and a driver market that tightens with or without new legislation — flexible contracts look like the only hedge that works in every scenario.