Mexico mega-port plan key to 'NAFTA superhighways'

WASHINGTON – There are mixed signals coming from Mexico about the fate of a proposed mega-port in Baja California for mainly Chinese goods that would be shipped on rail lines and "NAFTA superhighways" running through the U.S. to Canada.

The port at Punta Colonet, planned as a major container facility to transfer Asian goods into America's heartland, got at least a temporary setback when a Mexican businessman announced a competing project in which he was seeking to secure mineral rights in the area.

Gabriel Chavez, originally one of the principal movers behind the port plan, now says there are significant amounts of titanium and iron to be mined offshore – a project he considers more important than the port.

Mexican ports czar Cesar Patricio Reyes placed a moratorium on further work toward port planning for three or four months while the government explores ways to make everyone happy.

It is no secret the Mexican government is still committed to the port plan. A map from the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies shows the proposed goods route into a North American community.

According to transportation officials in Arizona, one of the sites considered for a rail line from Punta Colonet, the Mexican government has released an official directive stating its intention to create a new marine facility there -- about 150 miles south of the U.S. border.

The port at Punta Colonet, when completed, is expected to rival the biggest West Coast ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach, both heavily congested now.

Bringing goods into a Mexican port would mean lower costs for foreign shippers because of cheaper labor and less restrictive environmental regulations.

Hutchison Ports Mexico, a subsidiary of the Chinese company Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., is keeping reports about progress on the venture close to the vest.

Only recently has the port become a source of controversy in the U.S. as Americans begin questioning highway and rail projects criss-crossing the country – many of which are designed to carry product from Mexico to the U.S. and Canada on the so-called "NAFTA superhighways."

Resentment is building inside the U.S. because of what appear to be secretive plans made outside normal government policymaking channels about immigration, border policies, transportation and integration of the three North American nations.

Transportation Secretary Maria Cino has promised to release plans within months for a one-year, NAFTA pilot program permitting Mexican truckers beyond the limited commercial zone to which they are currently restricted.

The program will likely involve about 100 Mexican trucking companies, the Department of Transportation says.

Under the North American Free Trade Agreement – NAFTA – the borders were to open partially to truckers from both countries in 1995. Full access was promised by 2000. Because of the restrictions on Mexican trucks, the Mexican government has imposed limits on U.S. truckers.

The U.S. restrictions were placed by the Clinton administration in response to demands from the Teamsters union, which said Mexican trucks posed safety and environmental risks. Currently, the U.S. permits Mexican truckers only in commercial zones close to the border that extend no further than 20 miles from Mexico.

While the American Trucking Association supports opening the border, other unions have joined in opposition with the Teamsters. The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association came out this month in opposition to any Mexican truck pilot program.

Todd Spencer, the association's executive vice president, said the program would jeopardize safety on U.S. roads and would lead to an influx of cheap Mexican labor.

"A move by the U.S. Department of Transportation to open U.S. roadways to Mexican trucks puts the interest of foreign trade and cheap labor ahead of everything else, including highway safety, homeland security and the well being of hardworking Americans," Spencer said.

In a letter to the Interstate Trade Commission, Spencer wrote: "The net effect of admission of Mexican trucks into the U.S. marketplace would undoubtedly be negative. The supposed benefits to consumers from speculative reductions in shipping rates would be offset by the societal costs that are difficult to measure, but are easy to identify."

Raising more suspicions that such plans are leading to a future integration of the U.S., Canada and Mexico, a high-level, top-secret meeting of the North American Forum took place this month in Banff – with topics ranging from "A Vision for North America," "Opportunities for Security Cooperation" and "Demographic and Social Dimensions of North American Integration."

Despite "confirmed" participants including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Central Intelligence Agency Director R. James Woolsey, former Immigration and Naturalization Services Director Doris Meissner, North American Union guru Robert Pastor, former Defense Secretary William Perry, former Energy Secretary and Defense Secretary James Schlesinger and top officials of both Mexico and Canada, there has been no press coverage of the event. The only media member scheduled to appear at the event, according to documents obtained by WND, was the Wall Street Journal's Mary Anastasia O'Grady.

The event was organized by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the Canada West Foundation, an Alberta think-tank that promotes closer economic integration with the United States.

The Canadian event is just the latest of a series of meetings, policy papers and directives that have citizens, officials and members of the media wondering whether these efforts represent some sort of coordinated effort to implement a "merger" some have characterized as "NAFTA on steroids."

Last week, government documents released by a Freedom of Information Act request revealed the Bush administration is running what some observers see as a "shadow government" with Mexico and Canada in which the U.S. is crafting a broad range of policy in conjunction with its neighbors to the north and south.

The isolationists are spittin' in the wind.

And you Globalists are simply defecating into the fan...here are some disconcerting facts the Globalists try and spin and deflect:

A losing battle: our industrial base
Experts hint that the decline of U.S. manufacturing, reliance on imports imperil future defense capabilities
Indianapolis Star 10/08/2006
Author: Ted Evanoff
American troops drive 10,000 Humvees in Iraq. But if the U.S. Army suddenly needed 10,000 more of the slab-sided trucks for the war, the Indiana factory that makes them could not soon deliver. Tooling and machine shops that supply critical Humvee parts, such as extra-large 3.5-inch shock absorber bolts, aren't prepared to gear up output quickly.
"The industrial base just isn't there if we ever had to surge production,'' said Craig Mac Nab, spokesman at South Bend-based AM General, whose cavernous 1,100- employee Mishawaka plant is the Humvee's sole producer.
It's not only army trucks the U.S. might have trouble producing in large numbers.
For the first time since America emerged as a first-rank war and industrial power in the 1890s, some U.S. military planners openly doubt the country's manufacturers can sustain the nation in a major war larger than the Iraq conflict.
"What kind of superpower are you if you can't make what you need?'' asked systems engineer Sheila Ronis, a lecturer at the Pentagon's Industrial College of the Armed Forces.
The decline of the Detroit auto industry and the rise of industrial China have decimated a supporting cast of die, machine, mold and tooling shops, a metalworks industry centered in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio.
For the same reason imported chairs, televisions and clothes fill American homes, imported parts appear in increasing volumes in military hardware. Imports cost less than homemade.
While no one is sure how many imported parts are used in weapons systems, a growing chorus of researchers and trade groups express concern. They warn the rise of imports and the demise of the metalworks trades threaten the nation's manufacturing base.
"If we needed to seriously increase our capacity for military goods, it'd be a real challenge,'' said Bruce Braker, president of the Tooling and Manufacturers Association. The trade group, in Park Ridge, Ill., represents 1,627 companies, down 25 percent in a decade.
Shakeout in Heartland
In Indiana alone, 20 percent of the 524 tool, die, mold and machine shops open in 1998 had closed by 2004, idling 36 percent of the state's 11,000 metalworks employees. Throughout the industrial Midwest, 1,991 metalworks plants closed and dismissed 80,000 workers in the same years, the U.S. Census Bureau's County Business Patterns reports show.
For three decades, union members have urged consumers to buy products made in the U.S., largely to save union jobs. Ronis, head of the consulting firm University Group in Birmingham, Mich., says the stakes are larger. She links Detroit's decline with national security.
It's a controversial point. Pentagon researchers regularly assess the nation's industrial base. Each year they deem it capable of supplying the armed forces. Even so, some senior commanders now echo Ronis.
"One area of utmost concern for the Defense Department and defense industry is manufacturing machine tools,'' wrote Lawrence Farrell Jr., a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant general, in the February 2005 issue of National Defense magazine.
"There is a compelling case to be made," he wrote, "that both the federal government and the private sector need to step up their investments in manufacturing technology, so we can remain competitive with economic powerhouses such as Japan, Germany and China.''
Experience evaporating
America has enough factories. What's inside is in short supply -- experienced manufacturing engineers and talented machinists, diemakers and other highly skilled workers.
"We could ramp up production if we had to, but the problem would be finding experienced machinists. They aren't out there anymore,'' said Sam Reed, president of Reed Manufacturing Services, a 40- employee Franklin machine shop that supplies diesel and appliance makers.
No one expects a sudden turnaround, despite the Japanese automakers' expansion. Even as General Motors, Delphi and Ford set out to shed more than 40 factories between them, Honda and Toyota are investing heavily in the United States.
In Indiana, the two Japanese automakers will spend a combined $780 million on new car assembly lines employing 3,000 workers at Greensburg and Lafayette.
New jobs will help the economy, although Ronis says the new auto plants won't shore up the U.S. industrial base. While GM and Ford dismiss engineers, the Japanese automakers will engineer vehicle powertrains in Japan and obtain critical tooling there. She is concerned the United States' battered metalworking trades won't recover.
Since 1933, the Buy American Act has governed defense procurement. Last year, U.S. suppliers netted $79 billion in Pentagon contracts, compared with foreign firms' $1.9 billion.
However, Ronis, a director of the foundation supporting the Pentagon's National Defense University, contends America's weapons components supply chain now runs to China, France, Germany, Japan and other nations.
That's because U.S. companies spend an undisclosed share of that $79 billion on imported parts. As a result, China supplies as much as 10 percent of the parts for the U.S. Army's M1 Abrams main battle tank, Ronis suggested.
Overseas orders
If overseas supply lines were disrupted, U.S. manufacturers could step in. In many cases, though, engineers could not quickly scale up production. Much of the factory manufacturing equipment also comes from abroad.
In 2004, a third of the new U.S. metalworking machinery was imported, along with almost 46 percent of the process control instruments and nearly a quarter of the relays and industrial controls, reports the U.S. Business and Industry Council, a trade group in Washington that studies imports and exports.
"Imports may be the thing to do, but no one has asked the question, 'To what extent is a strong U.S.-located manufacturing base still vital to U.S. national security?' " said economist Alan Tonelson of the U.S. Business and Industry Council. The conservative trade group, based in Washington, favors import restrictions.
Pentagon planners divide into two groups. One emphasizes what is called systems integration -- as long as we know where in the world to buy the machinery and components, the U.S. can put it all together here.
A second group prizes U.S. manufacturing prowess. Some of these target Wall Street. They say manufacturers outsource merely for lower prices to meet Wall Street profit goals. Instead, some military planners argue, U.S. corporations no longer should report quarterly earnings. And U.S. tax incentives should encourage production and innovation in the United States.
Despite Detroit's decline, some metalworks plants thrive. In Indianapolis, Major Tool & Machine avoids automotive orders and focuses on defense, nuclear and aerospace.
Still, Jim Flanagan, president of the expanding 310-employee company, sees the industrial trend.
"This country,'' Flanagan said, "is losing its manufacturing edge.''

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