U.S., Mexican Transport Officials Agree on Border Trucking Panel

This story appears in the April 19 print edition of Transport Topics.

Transportation leaders of the United States and Mexico have taken steps toward resolving the countries’ trade dispute, which was sparked by the end of a cross-border trucking program and led Mexico to place tariffs on more than $2 billion in U.S. goods.

However, opponents of allowing trucks from Mexico to deliver in the United States pushed back, calling on U.S. leaders to remove cross-border trucking from the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and his counterpart, Communications and Transportation Secretary Juan Molinar Horcasitas, met April 12 in Monterrey, Mexico, and said they would name a working group to settle the dispute and reopen the border to longhaul truck traffic.

The officials “confirmed their intent to resolve these issues as a highest priority. In particular, the countries will establish a working group to consider next steps of the cross-border trucking program,” according to their joint statement.

The LaHood-Molinar meeting was the latest development in the long-standing dispute over cross-border trucking that heated up last year when Mexico slapped about $2 billion in tariffs on U.S. exports to the country in retaliation for Mexican trucks not being allowed into the United States. Last month, Mexico said it might levy more tariffs in the future (3-15, p. 1).

While the two secretaries said they were taking steps to resolve the dispute, 78 congressmen led by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees highway and transit issues, urged LaHood and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk to rewrite NAFTA to keep the border closed to Mexican trucks.

In an April 14 letter, the congressional group said it was “clear that the easiest path to eliminating the retaliatory Mexican tariffs is to renegotiate” the NAFTA trucking provisions.

The LaHood-Molinar statement didn’t say when members of the working group would be chosen or when they would meet. A U.S. Department of Transportation spokesman said DOT had no additional details beyond what was in the statement.

An official familiar with the process said Mexico was still “moving forward” with its new round of tariffs and added that DeFazio’s push “will complicate” efforts to resolve the dispute, but the United States could present Mexico with the outline of a new program before Mexican President Felipe Calderón comes to Washington on May 19.

In 2007, the Bush administration began a pilot program allowing a limited number of heavily vetted Mexican carriers to deliver to U.S. destinations (3-5-07, p. 1).

The program continued through the end of the Bush administration, despite congressional opposition, but was ended in early 2009.

While the Obama administration continued to work toward a solution, congressional opposition to a new border trucking program ramped up.

“An overwhelming majority of the Congress has supported my position,” DeFazio said April 14. He said the Obama administration was “working with Mexico on a plan to allow Mexican trucks free range across the United States of America despite the fact that the Mexicans have no meaningful hours-of-service rules, no drug-testing regime, no commercial drivers license registry and much of the equipment is substandard.”

“There’s only one way out of this mess. We aren’t going to open our highways to these unsafe trucks and we’re not going to lose the jobs of millions of American truck drivers and substitute Mexicans paid a dollar an hour who don’t have meaningful commercial drivers licenses and who don’t have the same kind of training into our country,” DeFazio said. “We need to renegotiate this section of this failed trade agreement. That’s the solution that the Obama administration must adopt.”

Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said he believes “there’s a great deal of work yet to be done on verification and validation” of Mexican trucks and drivers.

Once a truck arrives in the United States, it can be subjected to tests and examination, he said, “but we don’t know what’s happened to that truck before he got to the U.S.”

“We don’t know about this driver. Has he been on the road for 15 hours and then comply with the [U.S] 11-hour hours-of-service limitation, having already been in violation of it?” Oberstar said “And what about this person’s background?”

In addition, Oberstar, who signed DeFazio’s letter, raised “the competition question.”

“Our truckers are paid union wages and are complying with our very rigorous standards — do those trucks and their drivers represent fair competition?” Oberstar asked.

Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, said that group backed DeFazio’s effort.

“Mexico’s regulatory standards and enforcement on trucks aren’t even remotely equivalent to what we have here. To open the border at this time is insanity from both an economic standpoint and safety,” Spencer said.

OOIDA is one of several groups opposed to U.S. efforts to open the border. Rod Nofziger, OOIDA’s government affairs director, told Transport Topics, “If the working group is a means to Mexico raising its safety and security regulatory standards, wonderful. If not, it won’t do much to address the existing root problems.”