North American 'Trusted Traders' Begin Rolling on the NAFTA Super-Corridor

humaneventsonline ^ | Posted Jul 19, 2006 | Jerome R. Corsi

[dennisw]

North American 'Trusted Traders' Begin Rolling on the NAFTA Super-Corridor

by Jerome R. Corsi
Posted Jul 19, 2006 Through a series of acquisitions including Mexican railroads, Kansas City Southern (KCS, NYSE: KSE) has declared itself the nation’s first NAFTA Railroad.

On April 1, 2005, KCS completed the acquisition of Mexican Railroad TFM, S.A. de C.V., an acquisition which gained for KCS all the common stock of Groupo Transportacion Ferrovaria Mexicana, S.A. de C.V., the holding company that owned TFM. In December 2005, KCS changed the name of TFM to Kansas City Southern de Mexico (KCSM). The acquisition of KCSM was a key piece in putting together the “NAFTA railroad,” the marketing brand that KCS uses to market its North American service for both KCSM in Mexico and Kansas City Southern Railroad (KCSR) in the United States.

The KCS website makes clear the importance of Kansas City Southern de Mexico in the KCS NAFTA-focused marketing plan linking into network developing to use Mexican ports for the deliver to North America of goods manufactured in China and shipped across the Pacific Ocean in container ships:

The 2,661-mile KCSM operates the primary rail route in northern and central Mexico, linking Mexico City and Monterrey with Laredo, Texas, where more than 50 percent of the U.S.-Mexico trade crosses the border. The line also connects the major population centers of Mexico City and Monterrey with the heartland of the U.S. and serves the ports of Veracruz, Tampico and Lazaro Cardenas, a primary alternative to West Coast ports for shippers in the route between Asia and North America.

Click to Enlarge

As the map demonstrates, KCS has put together a “North American” railroad network consisting of three wholly owned operating subsidiaries: the Kansas City Southern Railroad (which operates Texas to Kansas City, along the eastern borders of the states of Oklahoma and Kansas), the Texas Mexican Railway Company (operating from Port Arthur to Laredo, Texas on the Mexcian Border), and the former TFM in Mexico (operating now as KCS de Mexico, extending from Laredo and Brownsville, Texas, through Monterrey, Mexico, down to Mexico City and the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas on the Pacific Ocean).

Kansas City SmartPort acknowledges the importance of the NAFTA Railroad in the Kansas City “inland port” concept. A brochure on the Kansas City SmartPort website outlines the marketing plan:

Kansas City offers the opportunity for sealed cargo containers to travel to Mexican port cities such as Lazaro Cardenas with virtually no border delays. It will streamline shipments from Asia and cut the time and labor costs associated with shipping through the congested ports on the West Coast.

In April 2005, Kansas City Southern completed purchase of a controlling interest in Transprotacion Ferroviaria Mexicana (TFM), enabling TFM, The Kansas City Southern Railroad and The Texas Mexican Railway Company to operate under common leadership, creating a seamless transportation system spanning the heart of North America known as “The NAFTA Railway.”

The same brochure emphasizes how extensively KCS is preparing for this cross-border traffic:

Kansas City Southern is installing Spanish language versions of its computer operating system (MCS) in an effort to increase train speeds, reduce waiting times at terminals and enable the free flow of locomotives and rail cars between the United States and Mexico via Kansas City Southern’s railroad bridge at Laredo, Texas.

Tasha Hammes of the Kansas City Area Development Council verified in a June 29, 2006 email to the author that, “The containers that come in through the port of Lazaro Cardenas will enter the U.S. on a U.S. railroad (Kansas City Southern). Yet, in a July 6, 2006 email to the author, Doniele Kane, an AVP for Corporate Communications & Community Affairs for KCS acknowledges that “TFM will remain a Mexican corporation with Mexican leadership,” even though TFM is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of KCS, an U.S. corporation. Moreover, Ms. Kane acknowledges that KCS de Mexico (KCSM) will retain Mexican management and Mexican railroad workers.

Railroad lines are a major design component of the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC), what we have argued is the prototype NAFTA Super-Highway to be replicated in north-south corridors throughout the country.

As specified according to the 4,000-page Environmental Impact Statement on the Trans-Texas Corridor website maintained by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), the 4 football fields-wide TTC-35 is planned to have separate lines for railroad cargo lines. Nowhere does the TxDOT website specify that railroads like the KCS NAFTA Railroad will have to pay for the new and improved rail beds being laid by the TxDOT, with funds provided by the Spanish Cintra capital consortium. Even though the TTC rail lines will be available on a toll basis, the plan to parallel I-35 should provide minimum disruption to KCS, whose rail route north roughly parallels the current I-35 route.

KCSM employees are then not represented by the various U.S. rail unions such as the United Transportation Union and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. Ms. Kane also made clear that “KCSM employees unionized employees in Mexico who are represented by Sindicato de Trabajadores Ferrocarrileros de la Republica Mexicana, the Mexican railroad workers union.” This union is a member of the Confederacion de Trahajadores de Mexico (CTM), a traditionally government-dominated union confederation that has a history of opposing worker efforts to establish independent unions along the U.S. model.

Mexican labor union historian and analyst Dan La Botz has argued that Mexican railroads were privatized as part of a World Bank- imposed settlement in the 1990s. La Botz wrote the following in 1998:

The first big privatization came on December 5, 1996, when the Mexican government sold the Northeast Railway to Mexican Railway Transportation (TFM), a consortium which included Kansas City Southern Industries (KSCI), for $1.4 billion.

With the approval of the Mexican labor authorities, the old state-company and the new TFM railroad management laid off the workers and nullified the old collective bargaining agreement. To keep a job, workers had to accept termination and their severance pay and be re-contracted without their previous seniority, pay or benefits. Many hundreds of the Northeast Railway workers lost their jobs altogether.

Ms. Kane of KCS points out that “No Mexican crews operate in the U.S. and no U.S. crews operate in Mexico.”

Frank N. Wilner, Public Relations Director of the United Transportation Union (UTU) agrees that at present KCS trains switch to UTU crews for all U.S. operations. The UTU strongly objects to any suggestion that Mexican crews would ever be permitted to operate trains in the United States. Mr. Wilner in a June 30, 2006 email to the author still that, “It is criminal that the rail industry, enjoying the highest profitability in its history, would roll the dice on public safety and national security by booting experienced American citizens from the locomotive cabs and replacing them with foreign nationals with limited skills in English and American railroad practices.”

The working groups organized in the U.S. Department of Commerce under the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP). The 2005 Report to Leaders found at the first tap to the left on SPP.gov makes clear that a North American “trusted trader” program will be run mostly on electronics “to substantially reduce transit times and border congestion.” NAFTA Railroad trains should be easily identified for immediate border passage, especially with the containers with appropriate “SENTRI” type systems that mark the containers to have originated from “trusted trader” shippers, even if the point of origin is China or the Far East.

We should also note that KCS and the company’s Chairman & Chief Executive Michael R. Haverty have been very prominent in SPP activities.

The 2004 Summit held in Kansas City, Missouri, by the North American International Trade Corridor Partnership (NAITCP), an affiliate organization of the North America’s Super Corridor Coalition, Inc. (NASCO) produced a brochure with a front page photograph of Mr. Haverty, documenting his attendance. Mr. Haverty is photographed at the right of the first row in the photo, with Dr. Robert Pastor of American University at the left of the row.

Dr. Pastor, who spoke at the summit, was the vice chair of the Council on Foreign Relations task force report “Building a North American Community,” which we have argued serves as the blueprint for SPP.gov. Dr. Pastor is the author of five books, including "Toward a North American Community," published in 1991. Dr. Pastor has consistently argued that NAFTA should be transformed by a process of tri-lateral administrative regulations and executive branch negotiated trilateral agreements into a North American Union regional government on the model of the European Union.

According to the Council of the Americas, Warren Erdman, senior vice president of Kansas City Southern Industries (KCSI) attended as one of the 10 business representative council members representing the United States at the first SPP “Ministerial Meeting” held with the newly formed North American Competitiveness Council (NCAA) on June 15, 2006, held at the U.S. Department of Commerce in Washington, D.C. We have previously questioned the Congressional authorization for NACC which has been organized under the auspices of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, a “treaty like” status that the Bush administration executive branch has declared to be a second-stage NAFTA arrangement to be in existence currently between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada.

As KCS evidences, the concept of a NAFTA Railroad is at the heart of the corridor transportation system being designed right now by international corporations and capital managers to bring goods from Asia into the emerging North American Union (NAU) via Mexican ports, to be delivered ultimately throughout North America by cheap transportation labor in which Mexican trucks and Mexican trains will play a key role.

As SPP develops into the NAU, the government executive branch agencies and the cabinet-level “ministers” in Canada, the United States, and Mexico will work very hard behind the scenes to erase our borders with Canada and Mexico. Border crossings for “trusted travelers” and “trusted traders” are intended to involve nothing more under SPP than a speed bump, an inconvenience not dissimilar from using an EZ-pass to go through a toll booth on a limited access highway. Whether moving by car, truck, or rail, government-issued electronics including biometric North American Union border passes will be all that is necessary to allow free passage, provided a toll is charged and collected.

[hedgetrimmer]

Really. Who is 'they', as in 'they gotta haul....

[deport]

Dems dats doing the hauling.... don'tcha know.

[hedgetrimmer]

Would that be Walmart?

[deport]

Goods that are produced or imported have to be moved across the country.... Now who 'they' that do the hauling is I'm not sure but my guess is it will be those that have either produced or imported the goods will seek out the 'theys' to do the hauling. Just a guess on my part.

[hedgetrimmer]

So American citizens and domestic manufacturers must sacrifice their jobs and properties and taxes so importers and foreign producers can haul their goods around the country?

[deport]

Supply and demand. Don't purchase the goods that are being imported and hauled around the country seems to me like would bring much of the imports to a halt, don'tcha think. Now how many citizens will chose that option I have no idea. But I'd guess the imports will continue until the citizens deem otherwise.

[hedgetrimmer]

Supply and demand.

No it isn't. Its manipulating the marketplace from the highest levels of our government to hurt citizens and domestic producers. So what if its hard to get chinese crap to kansas? Taxpayers are under no legal or moral obligation to foot the bill for chinese slave labor factory goods delievery systems. Their only obligation is to protect their rights and the rights of their neighbors and preserve constitutional government, not government by foreign fiat, and the SPP 'working groups'.

[hedgetrimmer]

As far as demand goes, the demand is from the federal government who uses cheap crap imports to manipulate the inflation index.

[sinkspur]

Its manipulating the marketplace from the highest levels of our government to hurt citizens and domestic producers.

This qualifies as the absolute Dumbest Post of the Day.

As your prize, you get a Chinese clock.

[deport]

Don't buy it and they won't be bringing it in for very long. I doubt they have enough warehouses to stash the stuff if'n it isn't bought.....

Get 'R Done

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Turns out the driver had checked himself into a mental health facility nearby.

Was this a Mexican driver?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

to use Mexican ports for the deliver to North America of goods manufactured in China and shipped across the Pacific Ocean in container ships:

The longshoreman at the LA and Long Beach harbor aren't gonna like this!

[deport]

As far as demand goes, the demand is from the federal government who uses cheap crap imports to manipulate the inflation index.

---

You mean to tell me all those folks walking around Walmart, Target, Sear's, Best Buy, etc buying this stuff that is being imported are all federal government employees out shopping to manipulate the inflation index?

[catholicfreeper]

I ran across this the other day. It would be funny if this isnt was't getting so stupid.

This guys is a Law Prof at Pepperdine he does this stuff for a living. He posted this

Buzz About A North American Union?
by Roger Alford
Opinio Juris has been receiving a significant number of hits in recent days from Google searches for “North American Union.” The hits relate to a post by Julian Ku regarding last year's report by the Council on Foreign Relations on a proposed North American Community.


All this traffic made me quite curious as to what was generated the buzz about the North American Union. I have done a little research and it appears most of the recent news relating to this topic is generated by a conservative commentator Jerome Corsi of Human Events Online. (Corsi is most famous as one of the authors of Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry.) Apparently some conservatives see in recent immigration reform proposals a genuine threat that the United States is moving toward a North American Union to replace the United States. Why there's even a Wikipedia entry about it so that must make it so.


Specifically, Jerome Corsi sees in the proposed immigration reforms a stealth move by President Bush to establish a North American Union. In an article entitled "North American Union to Replace USA" he wrote in May that “President Bush is pursuing a globalist agenda to create a North American Union, effectively erasing our borders with both Mexico and Canada. This was the hidden agenda behind the Bush administration's true open borders policy.”


Then in an article "North American Union Already Starting to Replace USA" he wrote three weeks ago that "What we have here is an executive branch plan being implemented by the Bush administration to construct a new super-regional structure completely by fiat. Yet, we can find no single speech in which President Bush has ever openly expressed to the American people his intention to create a North American Union by evolving NAFTA into this NAFTA-Plus as a first, implementing step."


Then earlier this week in an article entitled "North American Union Would Trump U.S. Supreme Court" Corsi wrote that a court to be established by the North American Union would trump the U.S. Supreme Court. "A key part of the plan is to expand the NAFTA tribunals into a North American Union court system that would have supremacy over all U.S. law, even over the U.S. Supreme Court, in any matter related to the trilateral political and economic integration of the United States, Canada and Mexico."

These conservatives fear that the European Union will be used as a model for the establishment of the equivalent here in North America. As Corsi writes, "What will happen to the sovereignty of the United States? The model is the European Community. While the United States would supposedly remain as a country, many of our nation-state prerogatives would ultimately be superseded by the authority of a North American court and parliamentary body, just as the U.S. dollar would have to be surrendered for the 'Amero'." But I can see very little if anything to support their fears. Having studied the European Union for years, and taught numerous courses on international trade and investment, I can say with confidence that the differences between NAFTA and the EU are so great that it is difficult to know where to begin. NAFTA is far, far closer to EFTA than the EU. And to the best of my knowledge there is nothing in recent proposals that would change that. Conservative unease apparently centers around President Bush's Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. But if you examine the SPP's agenda, it is far more modest than anything resembling the four freedoms of the EU, much less monetary union.

If anyone has further insights as to what is generating this recent buzz about a North American Union I would be quite curious to know its origins.
http://www.opiniojuris.org/posts/1150911561.shtml

[nopardons]

LOL

[deport]

Corsi takes several items, departments, laws, countries, agreements, etc and takes a snippet from one and then the other with internal links and combines them into a rambling montage. I have no doubts that the major postings of articles are his at this stage with maybe some blogs thrown in for measure. His writings are beginning to make me think of the one time freeper who posted here until JR banned him and he issued an edict that no articles of his could be posted on FR. I can't remember his name right now but could look him up if needed.

Corsi and his followers act like this is something that President Bush has started and it's all behind everyones back. President Reagan who is adored and admired on this forum and held up as the 'true conservative' had some distinct views about this Continent we live on.

President Reagan- State of the Union Address, Jan. 25, 1988

[excerpt]
One of the greatest contributions the United States can make to the world is to promote freedom as the key to economic growth. A creative, competitive America is the answer to a changing world, not trade wars that would close doors, create greater barriers, and destroy millions of jobs. We should always remember: protectionism is destructionism. America's jobs, America's growth, America's future depend on trade - trade that is free, open, and fair.

This year, we have it within our power to take a major step toward a growing global economy and an expanding cycle of prosperity that reaches to all the free nations of this Earth. I'm speaking of the historic Free Trade Agreement negotiated between our country and Canada. And I can also tell you that we're determined to expand this concept, south as well as north. Next month I will be traveling to Mexico where trade matters will be of foremost concern. And, over the next several months, our Congress and the Canadian Parliament can make the start of such a North American accord a reality. Our goal must be a day when the free flow of trade - from the tip of Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic Circle - unites the people of the Western Hemisphere in a bond of mutually beneficial exchange; when all borders become what the U.S.-Canadian border so long has been - a meeting place, rather than a dividing line.
[end excerpt]

And then let's not for Mr. Reagan's announcement for the Presidency on Nov. 13, 1979 and what his thoughts were regarding the role of the North American Continent in world affairs.

Mr. Reagan's candidacy announcement, Nov. 13, 1979

[excerpt]
We live on a continent whose three countries possess the assets to make it the strongest, most prosperous and self-sufficient area on Earth. Within the borders of this North American continent are the food, resources, technology and undeveloped territory which, properly managed, could dramatically improve the quality of life of all its inhabitants.

It is no accident that this unmatched potential for progress and prosperity exists in three countries with such long-standing heritages of free government. A developing closeness among Canada, Mexico and the United States -- a North American accord -- would permit achievement of that potential in each country beyond that which I believe any of them -- strong as they are -- could accomplish in the absence of such cooperation. In fact, the key to our own future security may lie in both Mexico and Canada becoming much stronger countries than they are today.

No one can say at this point precisely what form future cooperation among our three countries will take. But if I am elected President, I would be willing to invite each of our neighbors to send a special representative to our government to sit in on high level planning sessions with us, as partners, mutually concerned about the future of our continent. First, I would immediately seek the views and ideas of Canadian and Mexican leaders on this issue, and work tirelessly with them to develop closer ties among our peoples. It is time we stopped thinking of our nearest neighbors as foreigners.

By developing methods of working closely together, we will lay the foundations for future cooperation on a broader and more significant scale. We will put to rest any doubts of those cynical enough to believe that the United States would seek to dominate any relationship among our three countries, or foolish enough to think that the governments and peoples of Canada and Mexico would ever permit such domination to occur. I, for one, am confident that we can show the world by example that the nations of North America are ready, within the context of an unswerving commitment to freedom, to see new forms of accommodation to meet a changing world. A developing closeness between the United States, Canada and Mexico would serve notice on friends and foe alike that we were prepared for a long haul, looking outward again and confident of our future; that together we are going to create jobs, to generate new fortunes of wealth for many and provide a legacy for the children of each of our countries. Two hundred years ago, we taught the world that a new form of government, created out of the genius of man to cope with his circumstances, could succeed in bringing a measure of quality to human life previously thought impossible.

Now let us work toward the goal of using the assets of this continent, its resources, technology, and foodstuffs in the most efficient ways possible for the common good of all its people. It may take the next 100 years, but we can dare to dream that at some future date a map of the world might show the North American continent as one in which the people's commerce of its three strong countries flow more freely across their present borders than they do today.
[end snip]

Get 'R Done

[deport]

LOL

---

Well now think about it.

If'n the gubm'nt was paying all these people to its shopping then I was going to find out what my wife was doing with her paycheck each month.

[nopardons]

Maybe you should ask her. :-)

[hedgetrimmer]

I see. So federal taxes should pay to give foreigners a cost and time advantage over domestic producers. You "free traders" exhibit quite an unAmerican, and anti-rights philosophy.

[hedgetrimmer]

Get 'R Done

You mean violate the sovereignty of the American people? Thats what you want done? You should be honest and say so.