"We're as close as you can be," Mexican Economy Minister Bruno Ferrari (left, shown here with US Trade Rep Ron Kirk) said yesterday, confirming that his country is preparing to sign the formal Cross Border Trucking agreement to end the trucking dispute with the U.S. as early as this month
“We’re as close as you can be,” Mexican Economy Minister Bruno Ferrari said yesterday, confirming that his country is preparing to sign the formal Cross Border Trucking agreement to end the trucking dispute with the U.S. as early as this month, setting the stage for the country to remove the punitive tariffs that have cost 25,000 or more US jobs and market share.
Opponents of the program, The Teamsters and OOIDA in particular, in their desperation appear to be pulling out all stops, including turning to recognized HATE GROUPS to spread their message.
In this case, the organization in question is FEDERATION FOR AMERICAN IMMIGRATION REFORM (FAIR), a misnomer meant to confuse the public and lend them legitimacy.
FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, has employed white supremacists in key leadershpi roles, has accepted over a million dollars from a eugenics foundation AND, as if that weren’t enough, has helped to bolster racist conspiracy theories throughout the country.
FAIR is not the voice of the mainstream, it’s the voice of individuals who have helped fuel the 40% increase in the number of hate groups in the US. These aren’t citizen advocacy groups, or simply groups of concerned folk- they are hate groups plain and tall. But then, neither is the TEAMSTERS nor OOIDA.
A recent report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, outlines the story of FAIR as a hate group, and it justifies their official addition to the national list of hate groups maintained by the organization.
It’s been proven that opposition to Mexican trucks has nothing to do with safety, the ability of the Mexican carriers and their drivers to comply with and follow our rules and regulation, but is simply a veiled attempt to keep Mexicans out of this country. Jumping in bed with organizations such as FAIR, the largest and most vile anti-Hispanic organization in the US further proves this.
FAIR has an “Action Alert” posted urging all their nativist members to harass Congress to stop the program. Not much chance of that happening of course, but it there. and like this article in the CONSERVATIVE DAILY NEWS, has OOIDA executive vice president Todd Spencer’s prints all over it. As the article states, “Where is the Outrage?” We should all be outraged that these two groups, insignificant at best, continue to cost Americans thousands of jobs while pushing their anti-Mexican agenda.
For the most part, they’ve failed. More than 1400 trade associations, the majority of Congress have gotten behind this latest effort to bring us into compliance with our international obligations.
Despite being proven otherwise, we still see people showing their gross stupidity of the issue, or maybe it’s not stupidity, but their bigotry and prejudices coming to the surface such as this letter written to the Tuscaloosa News by Dwight Stripling of Northport Alabama.
Stripling writes;
Dear Editor: Under the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement, which President (Barack) Obama is working to get passed, Mexico will be entitled to haul goods throughout the United States.
But it was discovered that many of the trucks used in the program were poorly maintained, uninspected, and overloaded. Their brakes were bad, their tires were bald and almost always dangerously over the legal weight limit, but that’s not the worst of it.
The United States has safety regulations about how many hours a trucker can drive before he has to take a mandatory break, but the Mexican drivers have no such restrictions, and most are popping pills to keep themselves awake. There is also a possibility of them transporting illegal aliens, drugs, and potential terrorists and their weapons.
When Mexico began sending its trucks across the border, most of the drivers who were stopped for inspection were carrying some kind of contraband to supplement their incomes.
Back then, they carried marijuana and illegal aliens. Today, who knows what they could be carrying in those trucks besides drugs and illegals? Terrorists? Roadside bombs? Anthrax? Think about it!
As you can see, Stripling hasn’t a clue what he’s writing about. He blindly follows what he’s been told.
Rusty Wade, aka Yoda, webmaster for Dale “Trucking Bozo” Sommers website, even jumped into the mix with a article he titled, “UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED AGAIN”. Yoda claims;
A friend sent me pictures from his cell phone of trucks in Arizona that had just come across the border from Mexico at Nogales, Az.
I wondered how safe these Mexican trucks were, so I decided to check them with the FMCSA.
Things I noticed, the authorities were all valid, and there is nothing in that authority that specifies only in the border region, many of those trucks have both Mexican and Arizona tags. I have seen trucks tagged like this in every state of the union. Some do have a “z” after the DOT number some do not!
The absolute truth is these trucks are unsafe, they have repeated inspections that find the same defects.
What did Yoda think he found? Well, one company with 3 drivers, 2 tractors, 2 straight trucks and 4 trailers would seem to have racked up a total of 607 vehicle inspections, 752 driver inspections and 128 haz mat inspections in a 2 year period and they have an AWFUL CMS score if you look at it on the surface. However digging down, you see the majority of the driver violations is for a “non English speaking” driver, and all inspections of this cross border drayage company were done in Arizona.
Another company he lists, LOGISTICA DE CARGA DEL NOROESTE SA DE CV, similar stats. A vehicle OOS rate of 22% and a driver OOS rate of 2%, comparable to that of US drivers.
And it goes on. Many of these violations of these companies could probably be “DataQed” and removed, but at the end of the day, it’s more smoke and mirrors to mask the truth and shows the lengths opponents of Mexican trucking will go to.
Opponents of Mexican trucks want to ban Mexican trucks such as this one that they claim are dangerous, unsafe junk.
No, we’re not referring to (D-SC) Rep. Joe Wilson’s rude and insulting behavior during President Obama’s speech before a joint session of Congress.
Instead, we’re referring to the sophomoric letter to the US Trade Representatives office, by OOIDA President Jim Johnston on February 24.
Similar to the press release by OOIDA’s Norita Taylor that we commented on earlier, Johnston calls on U.S. trade rep to defend American jobs
Johnston made these claims:
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The debate over Mexican trucks is back and becoming heated as the opponents resort to the same tired rhetoric that has been debunked time and again. This time, we believe the outcome will be different
The Obama administration has taken the first step toward renewing a pilot program that allows Mexican?truckers to operate within the U.S., as stipulated in the North American Free Trade Agreement, but still must work with Congress on fashioning a new program, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said Tuesday.
U.S.Trade Representative Ron Kirk told a news conference in Mexico last week that the Obama administration had taken the first step in coming up with a new program when it convinced Congress not to prohibit a cross-border program in the 2010 omnibus spending bill.
With that being said, the mexenophobes are beginning to come out from under their rocks. Some, such as Teamster’s Jimmy Hoffa, using the same old tired and debunked rhetoric that he’s spewed for the past 18 years.
Others, such as OOIDA, seems to have largely abandoned the misinformation about the safety concerns and are now attacking the tariffs, and a report last year concerning the C-TPAT program.
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Trucks such as this Kenworth T660 are now the norm in Mexico, despite claims to the contrary by the protectionists opposing allowing these trucks into the US
U.S. business groups are growing increasingly frustrated with President Barack Obama’s failure to resolve a cross-border trucking dispute with Mexico they say has threatened thousands of American jobs.
“We’ve got companies that are really concerned,” said Frank Vargo, vice president for international economic affairs at the National Association of Manufacturers.
“Our calculation is that we’ve got 15,000 jobs at risk and the longer this goes on, the more likely it is that Mexican buyers are shifting suppliers,” Vargo said.
U.S. manufacturers hold out hope Obama’s meeting early next week in Guadalajara with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper could set the stage for action in Congress later this year.
Representative Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican who wrote Obama in March to urge quick action on the issue, said 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.
“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,” he said.
In the meantime, U.S. paper producers, potato farmers, grape growers and other businesses are suffering lost sales because of the duties Mexico imposed, Mulder said.
UNFULFILLED NAFTA COMMITMENT
Calderon’s administration took the move after Obama signed a 2009 spending bill that canceled a pilot program allowing Mexican trucks to operate beyond a 25-mile (40-km) commercial zone along the U.S. border with its southern neighbor.
The program was designed by the Bush administration to make good on a much-delayed U.S. commitment in the North American Free Trade Agreement to open its roads to Mexican trucks.
Congress killed the program because of what it called safety concerns, but Mexico said correctly said the move was really just disguised protectionism enacted on behalf of the powerful U.S. Teamsters union.
U.S. Trade Representative speaks out
In a reply to a letter sent by a Congressional stooge of OOIDA demanding answers concerning the legitimate tariff’s Mexico placed when the Pilot Program was canceled, USTR Kirk responded the best way to settle the situation was to open the border as we agreed. The tariff’s would go away.
When asked if his office was considering court actions against the tariff, Kirk responded saying the tariff’s might be lowered, but they would still be in place.
OOIDA still pushing debunked falsehoods
On todays, “LANDLINENOW” program, Mark Reddig continued to push the debunked and absurd suggestion that Mexico has no regulatory structure, no certified drug labs (I guess in his mind, a government testing center is not “certified”) and other nonsense they’ve been throwing out the past couple of years.
Although, he did appear to concede that maybe Mexico has some decent trucks (wonder if he as seen our galleries) he still maintains that Mexican trucks are cast off pieces of junk. Something most of us know to be not true.
But he continues to urge his shrinking member base to annoy Congress with their uninformed rhetoric in an attempt to derail any new attempts for the Obama administration to comply with our legal obligations.
OOIDA seems to have run out of steam, other than regurgitating droll and totally false claims. What they’ve latched onto now, is something called “Standards”. And of course, putting their totally frivolous spin on it.
They claim that the arbitration ruling by the NAFTA panel gave the US the right to demand that Mexico adopt standards equal to ours, and their not doing so negates our obligations under the treaty. This is more bullshit!
When the NAFTA arbitration panel ruled, they said the US had the “right” to demand Mexican trucks meet our standards.
The intent of this language is quiet clear. Mexican trucks desiring authority to operate in this country must demonstrate they can meet and operate under our legal and regulatory standards, WHEN OPERATING IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!
The 18 months of the previous Cross Border Program proved conclusively, that they can and do comply with our rules and regs, more so than US truckers, according to the FMCSA reports and the DOT/OIG Final Report on the program.
Time for the US to keep it’s word for a change and comply with our obligations in this issue.
Otherwise, don’t blame the Obama Administration for loss of jobs!
SOURCES: Reuters
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