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Trucks waiting in line for inspection during Road Check 2010 at Mexican "super coop" south of Nuevo Laredo. Mexico is a full partner in CVSA

President Felipe Calderón’s visit to Washington last month carried high expectations for those who hoped for a resolution of the cross-border trade dispute between the United States and Mexico. The Mexican president was expected to address the U.S.’ failure to comply with NAFTA regulations providing for an open border policy regarding ground transportation of goods across the U.S.-Mexican border. However, Calderón chose to focus his May 20 remarks to Congress primarily on U.S. immigration policy and the drug wars, resulting in yet another disappointing moment in the long saga of the cross-border trucking dispute.

Mexico’s dissatisfaction with U.S. border policy, as it relates to NAFTA, is not unfounded. In part attributable to the free trade agreement (FTA), Mexico has moved in to be the second largest U.S. export market, and is the U.S.’ most important trading partner, with a trade flow of approximately $1 billion a day. But in the sixteen years since the FTA went into effect, the U.S. continuously has failed to comply with the open border provision, denying full access to Mexican trucks on the claims of safety concerns on the part of U.S. trucking officials and government authorities. Last March, after over a decade of patient negotiation, Mexico slapped the U.S. agricultural and manufacturing industries with $2.4 billion worth of retaliatory tariffs on eighty-nine U.S. products. Despite the Obama Administration’s repeated pledge to resolve the trade dispute and heavy lobbying efforts on both sides, the U.S. still remains closed to Mexican trucks.

The History of the Dispute

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WASHINGTON — Mexican President Felipe Calderon will press President Barack Obama Sunday for a quick resolution to a cross-border trucking dispute that prompted Mexico to retaliate on $2.4 billion of U.S. goods, a news agency reported today.

“President Calderon will press forward our position and it will be great if we can get this solved at the latest by the end of this year,” a Mexican official told Reuters on Wednesday, speaking on condition that he not be identified.

Calderon will host Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper at a meeting in Guadalajara of the leaders of the North American Free Trade Agreement beginning Sunday.

The U.S. agreed in NAFTA to allow Mexican commercial trucks to transport goods within four U.S. border states in 1995 and throughout the country in 2000, but delayed implementation on safety grounds.

A Cross Border Demonstration Project was initiated in 2007, but the pilot program was killed by a vote of Congress earlier this year, prompting Calderon’s administration to retaliate with $2.4 billion U.S. manufacturing and agricultural goods tariff.

“When Congress decided to defund the program, we were told at the time they would come forward with something concrete relatively soon,” the Mexican official said.

Almost immediately after Obama signed the bill ending the demonstration project, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood held a round of meetings with Congressional leaders and trucking industry stakeholders after the White House told LaHood to work with Congress, the Transportation and State departments and Mexican officials to come up with legislation to create a new trucking project that will meet concerns over North American Free Trade Agreement commitments.

Meanwhile, Rep. Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican who wrote Obama in March to urge quick action on the issue, is quoted onwww.Mexicotrucker.com as saying he found it unimaginable that Obama would go to Mexico without some positive news for Calderon.< The president going to Mexico and not trying to resolve the trucking dispute would be like going to the G20 and ignoring the financial crisis,” Brady said, according to the Web site. “This is a very real dispute. The clock is ticking and there’s a lot of American farmers and manufacturers that are paying a pretty steep price.

SOURCE: The Trucker News Service & Reuter