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MEXICANS' TRUCKS * USA - U.S./Mexican trucking experiment in slow lane
Laredo,TX,USA -The Dallas Morning News, by Jessica Meyers -May 13, 2008: -- Javier Gonzalez is the middleman in a mandatory three-way handoff at Laredo's World Trade Bridge. He picks up goods that have come from Mexico City and takes them across the border in a shuttle truck. He then hands them over to an U.S. truck or warehouse within a 25-mile commercial zone limit... Trucks going into Mexico follow a similar procedure... For 25 years, the system has worked that way, seeming to satisfy truckers and safety officials on both sides of the border... But in 2001, seven years after the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect, the Department of Transportation and a NAFTA tribunal persuaded Congress to approve a pilot program that would allow specially registered U.S. and Mexican trucks to travel deep into each other's countries. Twenty-nine trucking firms – 21 Mexican and eight U.S., including two from Texas – now take part in the program. It was a gesture toward fulfilling NAFTA's open-border requirement... The program has been under fire in Washington from organized labor and environmentalists ever since... A decision is expected any day on a lawsuit filed last August in federal court in San Francisco to block the program on the grounds that Mexican trucks failed to meet adequate safety requirements. The Teamsters Union, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, Public Citizen and the Sierra Club formed an odd alliance to fight the Bush administration... And in December, congressional opponents of expanded Mexican trucking in the U.S. persuaded colleagues to cut off funding for the pilot. Although the Transportation Department and the White House got it restored, Sen. Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat who heads the Subcommittee on Interstate Commerce, is threatening to cut it off again... NAFTA is a sticky word in Washington these days... President Bush, Mexican President Felipe Calderón and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper all defended the trade agreement at a recent summit in New Orleans. But Democratic contenders Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton say they will rework it. And much to the Bush administration's chagrin, Congress just blocked a vote on a Colombian free-trade agreement... Here at the border, trucking is not about politics. It's about practicality.One Mexican trucking company owner sees no benefit to sending drivers deep into the U.S. Similarly, many American U.S. truckers appear content depositing their goods at Laredo's warehouses... In Washington, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration officials are struggling to prove the merits of an expanded cross-border program. Trucks crossing the border are inspected more frequently and thoroughly than trucks on U.S. roads, they say... Jeffrey Schott, a NAFTA specialist with the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics, said how that will happen is unclear... "No one in Congress is going to burn bridges on this issue by going against Teamsters," one of NAFTA's most vocal critics, Mr. Schott said... On the other hand, he said, complaints against trucking safety are minor compared to broader NAFTA problems. "This issue does affect the flow of goods throughout the region. But in terms of politics, energy, climate change and border security are much more important."... (Photos by ERICH SCHLEGEL/DMN - Hugo Martinez, an inspector for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, examines bolts on a Mexican truck entering Laredo. In a pilot program, U.S. and Mexican trucks are traveling far beyond their borders)
Labels: mexicans' trucks debate
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