Don't put the brakes on NAFTA trucking agreement
Thursday, August 7, 2008 12:39 AM PDT
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E-mail this articleAug. 7 Daily News editorial
The free trade movement is taking a beating this month. Prospects for new market-opening trade deals dimmed considerably last week with the collapse World Trade Organization talks in Geneva. Now Congress is preparing to renege on an important commitment in an existing trade deal — the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement.
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is moving legislation aimed at preventing the Bush administration from fulfilling NAFTA’s promise to give Mexican truckers full access to U.S. roads. This bill is just the latest congressional attempt to keep Mexican long-haul trucks off U.S. roads.
Under NAFTA, the United States had committed to giving Mexican trucks unrestricted access to U.S. roads by 2000. This is a treaty obligation — one made under a Democratic president. But congressional Democrats, spurred on by a protectionist-minded Teamsters union, want to renege on it. They’ve fought every administration move to honor that commitment over the past eight years.
A lawsuit seeking a costly environmental review held up plans for a one-year demonstration to show that Mexican trucks could safely navigate U.S. roads until 2004, when the U.S. Supreme Court said there was no need for such review. The high court ruled that the president had the authority to open the nation’s southern border to Mexican trucks, as NAFTA dictates.
Still, it wasn’t until last fall that the first Mexican long-haul trucks rolled across the border as part of that pilot project. The legislation voted out of committee late last week seeks to block administration plans to extend the demonstration project for two more years.
The Brotherhood of Teamsters, Sierra Club and other groups fighting to keep Mexican trucks south of the border cite environmental and safety concerns. In fact, the threat of foreign competition is what motivates this opposition. Mexican long-haul trucks crossing the border have to meet the same safety and pollution standards as U.S. trucks.
Indeed, Mexican trucks have long been allowed to operate up to 20 miles north of the border. A comprehensive review of thousands of Texas Department of Public Safety inspection reports by a University of Texas researcher showed that Mexican trucks crossing into the United States had no more safety violations than U.S. trucks. If there have been concerns about meeting emission standards, it is because this restricted, 20-mile access encouraged the use of older, short-haul trucks. The use of Mexico’s modern long-haul trucks is economically feasible only with full access to U.S. roads.
It’s time Congress ended its long fight to protect the U.S. trucking industry and allowed the administration to honor our treaty obligation. This attempt to keep Mexican trucks off U.S. highways only robs U.S. and Mexican consumers of the benefits promised under NAFTA.
mole wrote on Aug 8, 2008 12:08 PM:
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