After years of union efforts to keep them out, Mexican trucks are about to start rolling into the U.S., as allowed under the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The first truck will likely enter the U.S. within days, the Associated Press reports. But opponents are still doing their best to stop Mexican trucks. The Teamsters union and two California congressmen, in particular, are doing their best to stop cross-border trucking.
Says the AP:
U.S. Reps. Duncan Hunter and Bob Filner joined Teamsters President James Hoffa at the border Wednesday to take a bipartisan stand against the pilot project that will allow approved Mexican trucks to come deep into the United States. The first one will enter Texas on Friday.
Hunter is a San Diego-area Republican, while Filner is a Democrat whose district includes California's border with Mexico. They were surrounded at a news conference by more than 75 union members from at least five states.
Allowing Mexican trucking companies to deliver goods rather than transfer them to U.S. haulers at the border will put American jobs and highway safety at risk, they said.
"We're literally taking good jobs here in America and passing them over the line to Mexico," Hunter told the crowd, many holding signs reading "NAFTA kills" and "Stop the war on workers."
Washington on Friday approved the first Mexican trucking company, Transportes Olympic, nearly two decades after the hotly contested provision of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement set off lawsuits and a costly trade dispute between the neighboring countries.
Transportes Olympic's long-haul truck will cross the border Friday at Laredo, Texas, and head about 450 miles north to Garland, Texas, to deliver industrial equipment, said Guillermo Perez, the transport manager at the firm in the industrial Monterrey suburb of Apodaca, about two hours south of Laredo.
He dismissed claims that Mexican trucking companies and their drivers do not meet U.S. safety standards. He said his company has a strict, random drug-testing policy for its 61 drivers, and it has bought more than a dozen trucks in the past two years.
U.S. inspectors will check the trucks Thursday and will also have a database on truckers who have been approved by the U.S. Department of Transportation, Perez said.
"It's a really controlled program. There's no way to avoid the law," he said. "We are really prepared for this. It's not weird for me that some (U.S. trucking) companies are willing to shut it down because now they have to compete with us."
Poster Comment:
Chinese goods coming into Mexican ports, delivered to China-Mart by Mexican truckers.
Ever wonder why unemployment is so high? Thank the neocon/neolib globalist whores.