Return to TFB Main Page
Return to Texas Agriculture Archive

September 7, 2001

Facts should drive
U.S./Mexico trucking dispute

By Donald Patman
Texas Farm Bureau President

In recent weeks, the U.S. Congress has taken steps to bar Mexico-U.S. cross border trucking. The consequences of these actions will ultimately harm U.S. consumers and U.S. agriculture.

More than 85 percent of trade between the United States and Mexico moves across our shared border by trucks. Efficient cross border trucking operations are not only critical to United States exporters who ship their products to Mexico, but also to United States consumers who benefit from the greater variety and lower prices of Mexican goods. These efficient operations are dependent on the U.S. agreeing to open our border to Mexican trucks.

Under NAFTA, the United States and Mexico have an obligation to open the shared U.S.-Mexican border to trucks. To meet our obligations, and comply with a NAFTA Dispute Resolution Panel decision requiring the U.S. to open its border, the DOT proposed regulations to implement the cross-border trucking provisions of NAFTA. These regulations require that Mexican trucking companies take measures to certify that Mexican trucks fully comply with U.S. safety and regulatory standards. In addition, DOT plans to audit companies for safety before they are given a temporary permit to drive in the United States. Under these standards, Mexican trucks will potentially be subject to more rigorous inspection than U.S. trucks.

Despite these facts, Congress is threatening to undermine efforts to open the U.S.-Mexican border, citing concerns about safety that cloak a more protectionist agenda. Efforts to keep the U.S.-Mexico border closed to truck traffic will hurt U.S. consumers and exporters.

If Congress ultimately adopts a ban on Mexican trucks, Mexico is likely to adopt countermeasures, including a ban on U.S. agricultural imports equal to the loss incurred by Mexico from the ban on its trucks. These countersanctions could severely harm the United States agricultural industry because Mexico is a critical market for U.S. agricultural products.

In the year 2000, exports to Mexico accounted for almost 12.5 percent of total agricultural exports and produced a trade surplus of well over $1 billion. While U.S. agricultural exports worldwide have grown by 20 percent since 1993, our agricultural exports to Mexico have grown by 80 percent. If Mexico adopts countermeasures, it will be the agricultural industry, and our family farmers, that are hurt because the United States refuses to abide by its trade commitment under NAFTA.

Moreover, Congressional action to close our borders to Mexican trucks sends the wrong message to our trading partners worldwide.

While it is clear that all countries have a right to insist that goods and services imported to the country meet certain minimum standards, a dangerous precedent is established when any country begins to establish de facto prohibitions on trade in the form of unreasonable enforcement mechanisms.

Nowhere is this more clear than in the agricultural industry, where U.S. agricultural products are often subject to health and safety standards imposed by other countries that are designed not to protect consumer health and safety, but to prohibit U.S. agricultural products from fully and fairly competing with that country's agricultural products. The U.S. has always fought such policies on grounds of discrimination.

Now, that argument will be significantly weakened because other countries will point to Congressional action to close our border to truck traffic in defense of their own protectionist measures that effectively prohibit U.S. agricultural exports to those countries.

As representatives of a major part of the U.S. economy, and one that stands to benefit tremendously by opening the Mexican-U.S. border to truck traffic, we ask that Congress be guided by facts, not protectionist rhetoric.

The United States should make the right policy decision and stand by its trade commitment, for the good of all Americans, by allowing Mexico-U.S. cross border trucking to go forward.