I thought you might like to see what the allegedly biased, demo-lib Washington Post had to say in an editorial about Mexican trucks.
NAFTA in Trouble
Sunday, July 29, 2001; Page B06
ON THURSDAY U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick gave a stirring speech about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which seven years ago created the world's largest free trade area. He noted that U.S. exports to the two NAFTA partners -- Mexico and Canada -- support 2.9 million American jobs, up from 2 million at the time of the agreement, and that such jobs pay wages that are 13 percent to 18 percent higher than the average in this country. Trade with Mexico alone has tripled. Mexico now buys more from the United States than from Britain, France, Germany and Italy combined.
Unfortunately, Mr. Zoellick's fine speech was not the only NAFTA news last Thursday, for the Senate was simultaneously debating the treaty. A large majority of senators -- Thursday's procedural vote went 70 to 30 -- appears to believe that NAFTA's provisions on trucking across the Mexican border need not be implemented promptly. As a result, Mexico's government is likely to retaliate with $1 billion or more in trade sanctions. The great forward momentum of the U.S.-Mexican economic relationship may start to be unraveled.
Under NAFTA, Mexican trucks in the United States must abide by U.S. regulations: If they are too dangerous or dirty, they can be pulled off the road. But NAFTA's opponents want to keep Mexican trucks out -- period. For the past seven years, the United States has bowed to protectionists by refusing to process Mexican applications for trucking licenses, a practice that NAFTA's dispute-settlement panel has condemned. Now the Bush administration wants to end this obstructionism, but Congress is getting in the way. The House has passed a transportation spending bill that would bar the administration from processing Mexican applications. The Senate is adopting the subtler approach of allowing Mexican trucks in -- but only on various burdensome conditions that will have the effect of delaying the opening of the border by a year or more.
The sponsors of the Senate measure, Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), say these conditions are reasonable because Mexican trucks fail U.S. safety standards 50 percent more often than American ones. But this claim is based on questionable numbers, and the right response to high Mexican failure rates is to apply existing U.S. trucking regulations rigorously. The Senate measure goes beyond legitimate rigor and blurs into imposing discriminatory regulations on Mexican carriers. President Bush says he will veto legislation unless such discrimination is removed from it. That is the right course.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
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