(On January 12, 2011, a column by Teamsters General President James P. Hoffa regarding the Mexican cross-border trucking program was published in the Detroit News.)
The Department of Transportation last week proposed that the United States re-start a cross-border trucking program with Mexico — part of the NAFTA trade deal. The Bush administration had already tried such a program and failed. Though the Bush program cost taxpayers $500 million, U.S. officials still weren’t able to verify that all Mexican trucks were checked when they crossed the border. Hardly any Mexican trucks ended up driving beyond the border zone – about three a day.
The tremendous cost to taxpayers doesn’t even take into account the horrifying drug violence in Mexico. Ciudad Juarez, just across the river from El Paso, is the most dangerous city in the world. Texas public safety officials warned travelers not to go to Mexico over the holidays, and the U.S. Homeland Security Department notified the trucking industry in October that criminals already hijacked over 10,000 trucks in Mexico that year. Homeland Security also reported that, “Drug traffickers also have been known to hijack and clone legitimate commercial trucks to transport illicit cargo across the border.”
My union will fight like hell against opening the border to Mexican trucks. We simply don’t believe U.S. taxpayers should pay to let more Mexican companies depress American workers’ wages.
* * *
Full text of the column is available on the Teamster website.