Mexico-Cross border truckers disputes hits farmers.
MEXICO-TRANSPORT DISPUTE.
A Mexican trucking association has filed a Notice of Arbitration with the United States , alleging that ending the cross-border trucking program between the two nations violates the North American Free Trade Agreement.
On April 2, CANACAR, a trade association representing Mexican motor carriers, filed charges that the US . Department of Transportation violates NAFTA. Mexico also has responded to the U.S. closure of the program by imposing $2.4 billion in tariffs.
U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) introduced a bill to continue the cross-border trucking program with Mexico on March 19. That bill, H.R. 1611, would repeal language in the fiscal year 2009 omnibus spending bill that prohibits program funding. It was referred to the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and has no co-sponsors.
"It defies logic that the U.S. would risk a trade war during a recession with our third largest trading partner just because we refuse to allow fewer than 100 trucks from Mexico into the country," Flake said.
On April 7, about 140 business organizations wrote President Obama to ask for the dispute to be ended. Conversely, the Teamsters and the Owner-Operator Independent Driver Association have applauded the program’s end because they maintain that Mexico has not met U.S. safety standards.
The United States has been in arbitration with Mexico before over the issue of cross-brooder trucking. In 1998, Mexico initiated party-to-party arbitration against the United States . In 2001, the NAFTA’s Cross-Border Trucking panel unanimously determined the United States was in violation of NAFTA and recommended immediate efforts to bring the United States into compliance.
OOIDA has asked a federal court for a ruling on the association’s legal challenge to the Mexican trucking pilot program.
In a letter to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco , OOIDA argued that unless a ruling is handed down on the lawfulness of that program, then the government could use invalid data to support a more expansive cross-border trucking program.
Since 1995, the U.S. government has spent more than $500 million to improve border inspection stations and hire more than 600 new federal and state truck inspectors, according to the DOT.
etrucker.com
