NAFTA truck dispute in court

Pilot program for Mexican vehicles in U.S. could start Saturday

By MICHELLE MITTELSTADT and JENALIA MORENO
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

WASHINGTON — The Teamsters Union and three public-interest groups asked a federal court Wednesday to block the Bush administration from opening U.S. roadways to Mexican trucks as early as this weekend.

The request to the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco for an emergency injunction marks the latest effort in a 13-year battle by the Teamsters to stymie cross-border trucking provisions ratified under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The union has long argued the introduction of Mexican trucks would compromise highway safety and cost U.S. jobs.

"What a slap in the face to American workers — opening the highways to dangerous trucks on Labor Day weekend, one of the busiest driving weekends of the year," Teamsters General President James Hoffa said.

In their court filing, the Teamsters, Sierra Club, Public Citizen and Environmental Law Foundation argue the administration is poised to launch its one-year pilot program before having met all of the requirements imposed by Congress.

Hector Marquez, head of the Mexican Economic Ministry's Trade and NAFTA Office in Washington, deplored the legal challenge.

"It's very unfortunate because certainly the governments of Mexico and the United States have put forth a tremendous effort to put in place all the requirements, all the mechanisms, all the personnel and the resources to make this work and to guarantee the security and safety," Marquez said.

The Transportation Department's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration dismissed the lawsuit as "without merit."

The department this year indicated it would launch a one-year test allowing up to 1,000 Mexican trucks full access to U.S. roadways, beyond the 25-mile buffer zone to which Mexican carriers have been confined since 1982.

The pilot's launch awaits certification from the Transportation Department's inspector general that the government has sufficient inspectors and inspection facilities to ensure that Mexican trucks meet U.S safety requirements.

A Teamsters spokeswoman, Leslie Miller, said union lawyers were advised by Transportation Department attorneys that the inspector general's certification would be provided Friday, allowing the program to proceed the next day.

A Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration spokeswoman said the timeline would be dictated by the inspector general's certification.

Seeing improvement

In an audit report earlier this month, the inspector general reported a number of unresolved hurdles — but also cited "continual improvement" in the transportation agency's border safety program.

But Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Stafford, and others in Congress said they remain concerned.

"I would hope that President Bush would reconsider what he's doing," said Lampson, who serves on the House Transportation Committee.

"We need to place the safety of Texans as high as we possibly can place this, and doing this, I think, takes some chances."

Lampson also argued that national security could be affected if the government doesn't inspect all incoming cargo.

With the House having voted overwhelmingly last May to curb the scope of the trucking pilot program, the Teamsters say they will seek additional congressional action if the 9th Circuit doesn't grant the emergency injunction.

The inspector general's audit could give fodder to critics on Capitol Hill.

Investigators noted problems with the database used to check Mexican drivers' records for traffic convictions in the United States — largely because Texas and New Mexico didn't properly report driver convictions to the federal 52nd State System that tracks Mexican drivers.

The audit noted that Texas stopped sharing conviction information with the database in 2006 — an oversight federal officials didn't notice until the inspector general brought it to their attention. New Mexico's data wasn't entered because of incorrect coding, the audit found. Since then, almost half of the Texas backlog of 40,000 Mexican driver convictions has been cleared, the report said.

Companies cool to idea

Even as haggling continues over the cross-border trucking program, some Mexican trucking company officials say it's the politicians — not they — who are interested in opening the border.

"We don't want to go to the United States, and the Americans don't want to go to Mexico," said Rolando Ortega, a delegate from the Matamoros, Mexico, chapter of the National Confederation of Mexican Carriers, which has 280,000 members. "It doesn't reflect the reality of the transportation industry."

Mexican trucking companies that deliver to the U.S. border zone already are struggling with rising insurance rates, longer lines to cross into the U.S. and a lack of credit to buy trucks, said Ortega, who owns 18 trucks.

Only large carriers will haul cargo from Houston to Hidalgo or Memphis to Monterrey, some Mexican trucking company executives say.

"The only companies that want to do that are the trans- national companies and the companies that move their own cargo," said Oscar Garza, a delegate for the Reynosa chapter of the confederation of Mexican carriers.

Many Mexican truckers cannot read signs in English, are unfamiliar with the U.S. highway system and don't know how to find cargo in the U.S. for their return trip to Mexico, said Garza, who once owned 35 trucks and now only has one because of decreased profitability.