Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York introduced the Trucking Security and CCP Disclosure Act of 2026 on February 25th, and if you work in government freight at any level of the food chain, you need to understand what this bill actually does.
It’s not just aimed at the prime contractor. It puts the certification burden on the whole chain.
What the Bill actually says
The legislation amends Title 10 of the U.S. Code by inserting a new section, 2631b, that creates a certification requirement for surface transportation contracts with the Department of Defense.
The plain English version: no DOD freight contract can be awarded to, or performed by, any covered carrier unless that carrier submits a written certification. That certification must state that the carrier is not owned, controlled by, or maintaining significant business relationships with any entity appearing on the Pentagon’s Section 1260H Chinese Military Companies list.
Here is the part that should get the attention of every freight broker and fleet dispatcher in the country.
The bill explicitly states the requirement applies to prime contractors, subcontractors, and owner-operators at all tiers.
All tiers. Not just the company that won the bid. The guy who got dispatched off a load board at the end of the chain has to be certifiable under this standard. Prime contractors are required to flow that certification requirement down through every subcontract and lease agreement they execute. They have to keep records of those certifications for at least 5 years.
If you sign that certification knowing it’s false? The bill subjects violators to suspension and debarment from DOD contracting, as well as civil penalties under 18 U.S.C. 1001. That is the federal false statements statute. People go to prison under that statute.
The registry
Section 3 of the bill goes further. It directs FMCSA, in coordination with the Secretary of Defense, to establish a Secure Defense Freight Carrier Registry within one year of enactment.
To get on the registry, a carrier has to hold valid FMCSA operating authority, meet all applicable DOD carrier qualification standards, undergo enhanced national security vetting that screens for ownership or control connections to 1260H entities or any other foreign adversary entity designated by the Secretary of Defense, and verify that drivers and personnel with access to DOD freight meet security standards comparable to the Transportation Worker Identification Credential program.
Re-vetting is required at least every two years.
One year after enactment, a motor carrier cannot bid on or perform a DOD freight transportation contract unless it appears on that registry. There is a waiver provision for exigent circumstances at the Secretary of Defense’s discretion, but the baseline prohibition is hard.
Why do we need this Bill?
The setup for this legislation has been years in the making.
In January 2025, the Pentagon added COSCO Shipping, the fourth-largest ocean carrier in the world, to its Section 1260H Chinese Military Companies list. COSCO operates joint venture container terminals at the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Seattle. Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries, known as ZPMC, manufactures 70 percent of container cranes globally and accounts for 80 percent of the cranes operating in U.S. ports, including 10 Strategic Seaports designated for military deployments. Congressional investigators found surveillance-capable communications equipment inside those cranes.
China’s logistics platform LOGINK gives the Chinese government visibility into shipping supply chains sufficient to track U.S. military cargo moving on commercial freight. That is not a theory. That comes from a MITRE analysis published in February 2024.
Meanwhile, the Defense Freight Transportation Services contract, a $2.3 billion program managed by Crowley Solutions, moves U.S. government cargo through more than 40 major depots across the continental United States, Alaska, and Canada. The trucking that touches that program passes through layer after layer of subcontracting. The security apparatus at the prime contract level has never been required to accompany the freight all the way to the cab.
Until now, at least in bill form, nobody has required the person actually driving that freight to certify who they work for or who owns the company they work for.
Why now?
No, it wasn’t my past articles on X or Freightwaves on this topic, maybe it was, but in December 2025, a Chinese national named Yisong Huang, who entered the country illegally through Mexico in 2023 and received work authorization from the Biden administration, was issued a Class B commercial driver’s license by the state of New York. Eight months later, he rear-ended a tractor-trailer on I-40 in Tennessee while watching a video on his phone and killed Kerry Smith, a 31-year-old American truck driver. When the Tennessee Highway Patrol administered an English proficiency test required under FMCSA Section 391.11(b)(2), Huang failed it.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s subsequent audit found more than half of New York’s non-domiciled CDLs had been issued illegally. Since June 2025, more than 9,500 drivers have been placed out of service under English proficiency requirements that existed on paper but went unenforced for nearly a decade.
FMCSA showed it can move fast when pushed. What it lacked was a legal mechanism that specifically tied carrier relationships to Chinese military entities. This bill creates that mechanism.
What gap are they trying to close?
The existing DOD prohibition on directly procuring from 1260H entities does not take full effect until June 2026. The indirect prohibition remains in effect until June 2027. For now, the supply chain remains largely unvetted for Chinese military connections at levels below the prime contractor.
The Trucking Security and CCP Disclosure Act tries to collapse that gap. Rather than waiting for the NDAA prohibitions to phase in, it puts the certification burden on everyone in the chain immediately upon enactment and creates the registry infrastructure to enforce it.
The weakness in the current system has always been the same. A prime contractor can certify everything correctly. Then they tender to a broker. The broker dispatches to a carrier. The carrier subcontracts to an owner-operator. By the time a truck shows up at a military depot gate, nobody in that chain below the prime has attested to anything regarding their ownership structure or Chinese military connections.
This bill says every one of those parties has to sign something. And the prime contractor is responsible for making sure they do.
What carriers should do now?
If you haul government freight in any capacity, the time to audit your ownership disclosures is not after this bill passes. It is now.
That means knowing your ownership structure and being able to document it. It means understanding whether any of your major customers, investors, or business partners have relationships with entities that appear or could appear on the 1260H list. It means ensuring any owner-operators or subcontractors you use for DOD freight can obtain the same certifications.
The FMCSA registry that this bill creates would require security vetting comparable to the TWIC standard. Carriers who have never gone through that kind of vetting are going to need lead time.
The bill gives the Secretary of Defense 180 days after enactment to prescribe implementing regulations and 1 year to stand up the registry. That timeline is not far off if this moves through committee with any momentum.
Congress spent the past several years restricting Chinese access to American ports, farmland near military bases, telecommunications infrastructure, and semiconductor supply chains. The trucking industry, the part of the supply chain that physically moves freight from a depot to a base, has operated largely outside that scrutiny.
Stefanik’s bill is a direct attempt to extend the same logic that applies to cranes and container terminals to the trucks and drivers on the ground.
There is no registry today that tells DOD which motor carriers are clean from a Chinese military connection standpoint. There is no flow-down requirement that forces prime contractors to extend their security certifications to the subcontractors and owner-operators they use. There is no periodic re-vetting requirement for carriers once they are approved. This bill creates all three.
Whether it passes in its current form, gets amended, or gets folded into the next NDAA as a provision is a legislative question. But the direction is clear. The era of assuming that cleared contractors automatically mean secure freight is over.
The bill was introduced on February 25, 2026, referred to a committee, and awaits action.
