Posted on 12/04/2017 10:49:56 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
RIO GRANDE CITY, Tex. — Caught quite literally in the middle of the international debate over the way the United States trades with its southern neighbor are two Texans named Sam.
Sam Vale and Sam Sparks Jr. own two bridges that stretch across the Rio Grande, connecting farmers on either side with markets on the other, and linking communities in South Texas and northern Mexico that sometimes meet in the middle.
Major retailers and manufacturers are mobilizing to keep the deal alive and to protest rules that could make it more expensive to bring parts and products in from Mexico. For the bridge moguls, anything that stanches the flow of traffic could be costly.
Trucks carried $373 billion in cargo across bridges on the southern border last year, accounting for 71 percent of all trade in goods with Mexico, according to the American Trucking Association.
“Nafta benefits this bridge big time,” said Mr. Sparks, who voted for Mr. Trump. “We kind of want them to leave it alone.”
Mr. Sparks and his three siblings own the Progreso International Bridge, serving Progreso, Tex., a town blanketed by ranches and farmland. A border wall built on American soil runs through his property, and he can open it by punching a code into a keypad on its facade. The majority of border bridges belong to the government. But the Sams are exceptions, private owners of crossings collecting tolls that can exceed $30 per truck.
As cross-border truck volume doubled in the last two decades, those tolls have given rise to a pair of multimillion-dollar businesses, a dividend of the traffic ferrying construction materials in both directions, avocados from Mexican fields to American supermarkets, and Midwestern wheat to Mexican breweries.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
What is the law? Once that discussion is ended we an then debate.
We can then debate.
Well...sometimes when you bet on a foreign country’s trade over American domestic production...you just might lose your ass. Cry me a river!
Screw these two Sams. Blow up the bridges and put up Kate’s Wall.
There’s a lot of Americans in Texas New Mexico Arizona and California who feel like the two Sams.
Well-said.
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