Mexico Plans Tariffs in Cross-Border Trucking Dispute
Mexico plans to put tariffs on about 90 U.S. industrial and agricultural products in retaliation for a U.S. decision to cancel a pilot cross-border trucking program between the two countries, news services reported.
The Mexican Economy Department said the decision violates a provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement that was supposed to have opened cross-border trucking years ago, the Associated Press reported.
Mexican and U.S. officials will meet in the “coming days” to find a solution to the trucking dispute, Mexico’s Economy Minister, Gerardo Ruiz Mateos, told a radio station in Mexico City, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.
Mexican officials said the plan will affect about $2.4 billion in goods, including about 90 agricultural and industrial products from 40 U.S. states, AP reported.
Congress included a provision last week that would halt the pilot program that would allow Mexican trucks freer access to U.S. highways beyond a set border zone, although the Obama administration was reportedly considering keeping it.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Monday the Obama administration was working with Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), a critic of the cross-border plan, to craft a bill that would deal with lawmakers’ concerns, AP reported.
The U.S., Canada and Mexico signed NAFTA in 1993, but President Bill Clinton set a moratorium on Mexican trucks having free U.S. access a year later.
The Bush administration and Transportation Department began a pilot cross-border program with Mexico in 2007, over the objections of labor and safety advocacy groups, who opposed it.
