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After years of negative votes in Congress and the opposition of the American people, on Oct. 21 Barack Obama allowed the first Mexican truck to cross the border at Laredo, Texas, and head north to deliver door-to-door service of its industrial equipment. This was implemented by an agreement quietly signed by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood in Mexico City on July 6 with Mexico's secretary of Communications and Transportation. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., calls this deal a major anti-jobs program saying, "We're literally taking good jobs here in America and passing them over the line to Mexico." Todd Spencer, executive vice...

The first Mexican carrier is set to roll into the U.S. interior within days, but the Teamsters union and two California congressmen haven't given up on stopping the cross-border trucking program that had been stalled for years by safety concerns and political wrangling. U.S. Reps. Duncan Hunter and Bob Filner joined Teamsters President James Hoffa at the border Wednesday to take a bipartisan stand against the pilot project that will allow approved Mexican trucks to come deep into the United States. The first one will enter Texas on Friday. Hunter is a San Diego-area Republican, while Filner is a Democrat...

Oct 6 (Reuters) - Mexican trucks will start crossing the U.S. border again in a couple of weeks, reducing transportation costs between the two neighbors by some 15 percent, Mexico's Economy Minister Bruno Ferrari said. The resolution of the long-standing cross-border trucking dispute should give an additional boost to Mexican manufacturers, who have been fighting to increase their market share in the United States. "If you take into consideration that Mexico's manufacturing costs are at least 25 percent lower than in the U.S., this is going to be a very strong competitive advantage," Ferrari told Reuters in an interview late...

Not content with soaring unemployment numbers and destroying our banking housing healthcare auto making and oil drilling industries (to name just a few) Barack Obama has just handed Mexico virtual control of the American trucking industry. One of Obama’s most useful idiots,putative Republican U.S. Secretary Transportation Ray LaHood,traveled to Mexico City to sign the “agreement” far from our gaze as he made certain America’s humiliation was complete. By ratifying a so-called “pilot” program to allow Mexican junk wagons disguised as long haul trucks onto the highways we pay for Obama has handed his pal Felipe Calderón another way to sneak...

TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico - Police on Tuesday detained 513 undocumented migrants from Latin America and Asia who were crammed into two trucks bound for the United States, prosecutors in southeast Mexico said. The migrants, from Latin America, Japan, China, India and Nepal, "were traveling in inhuman conditions" in the southeastern state of Chiapas, near the Guatemalan border, the local attorney general's office said in a statement. Police stopped the trucks, carrying 240 and 273 people, on the outskirts of state capital Tuxtla Gutierrez early Tuesday, after they accelerated through a vehicle scanner at a police checkpoint, the statement said. Officers...

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – A program to expand the busiest commercial crossing over the U.S.-Mexico border was inaugurated on Friday, nearly doubling the capacity for trucks entering Laredo, Texas, from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, authorities said. The program increased the number of truck lanes at the World Trade Bridge into Laredo, to 15 from eight, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency said. The expansion also added an additional exit lane for vehicles leaving the facility, which currently handles around 5,000 trucks a day and has been so busy that trucks were delayed several hours. "It is going to be a...

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Mexico said Monday it will increase tariffs on a total of 99 U.S. products to pressure Washington to lift a ban on Mexican cargo trucks entering the United States. Last year, Mexico added tariffs to 89 products after the U.S. canceled a pilot program that allowed some Mexican trucks to transport goods into the United State. The Economy Department said the latest step will affect about $2.5 billion worth of trade involving agricultural and industrial products from 43 U.S. states. It said the list of products would be released later this week. The department said the...

Does anyone truly believe corruption will not surface among officials in the Mexican government if a FAST Pass system is part of a cross-border trucking plan?

A ban on Mexican trucks inserted into U.S. law in 2009 by retiring Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., has now expired, so the pressure to admit Mexican trucks is intensifying. On March 1, 56 members of Congress (including 29 Republicans) signed a letter asking the Obama administration to reopen our borders to Mexican trucks. In response, opponents gathered the signatures of 78 members of Congress on an April 14 letter calling on Congress to permanently ban cross-border trucking. That letter included only six Republicans.

WASHINGTON, May 6 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's adminstration will soon announce its plan to reopen the U.S. border to Mexican trucks and end a dispute that prompted Mexico to slap duties last year on $2.4 billion worth of U.S. goods, a top U.S. official said on Thursday.

A U.S. program that offers trusted trucking companies speedy passage across American borders has begun attracting just the sort of customers who place a premium on avoiding inspections: Mexican drug smugglers. Most trucks enrolled in the program pause at the border for just 20 seconds before entering the United States. And nine out of 10 of them do so without anyone looking at their cargo. The government keeps the list of participants secret, citing national security and trade secrets. More than half of all U.S. imports now come from companies in the program, called the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, or...

DALLAS — Canada’s trade minister said Monday that some progress is being made on a nagging trade issue with the United States, while U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said a tangled dispute with Mexico over cross-border trucking and California Christmas trees might resolve itself next year. Welcoming Cabinet-level Mexican and Canadian trade officials to the city where he served as mayor, Kirk said language that removed funding for the Mexican truck program has been restored in next year’s budget bill. "We won’t be handcuffed by prohibitory language," he said. When the border was closed to 500 U.S.-certified trucks in a...

GUADALAJARA, Mexico – President Barack Obama pressed for a new tone in the United States' relationship with Mexico but found no immediate progress Sunday on the divisions between him and Mexican President Felipe Calderon over the pace of U.S. drug-fighting aid and a ban on Mexican trucks north of the border. Obama kicked off his second trip to Mexico as president with a friendly 45-minute meeting with Calderon that touched on the vast trade relationship between their two countries, their cooperation on swine flu and the violent Mexican gangs dominating the drug trade on both sides of the border. Their...

WASHINGTON -- U.S. business groups are growing increasingly frustrated with President Barack Obama's failure to resolve a cross-border trucking dispute with Mexico they say has threatened thousands of American jobs. "We've got companies that are really concerned," said Frank Vargo, vice president for international economic affairs at the National Association of Manufacturers. "Our calculation is that we've got 15,000 jobs at risk and the longer this goes on, the more likely it is that Mexican buyers are shifting suppliers," Vargo said. U.S. manufacturers hold out hope Obama's meeting early next week in Guadalajara with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian...

A plan containing guidelines on getting Mexican trucks back on U.S. highways has gone through bureaucratic review, the first step toward ending Mexican tariffs on $2.4 billion worth of U.S. goods. Implementing the plan would quell growing dissent among U.S. businesses that are hurt by Mexico's tariffs and that continue to besiege Washington with claims that doing nothing will result in job losses. The tariffs were imposed as retaliation for legislation enacted in March that took Mexican trucks off American highways, despite the North American Free Trade Agreement's program to let them into the United States.

Trucking Headlines U.S.-Mexico trucking plan may resumeBy Jill Dunn The United States may allow Mexican trucks to do business here as early as June, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood reportedly said May 22. This spring, Congress ended the cross-border trucking program between the two countries. Mexico responded with 90 tariffs totaling $2.4 billion on U.S. products, casting a heavy burden on U.S. producers, LaHood said in a Bloomberg story. Candice Tolliver, the new communications director for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, did not immediately respond to questions. In recent weeks, the FMCSA began work with the U.S. Trade...

Signs showing an integrated North America have begun showing up on U.S. Interstate highways for NORPASS, a new electronic system that allows participating truckers in Canada and the U.S. to by-pass roadside weigh stations through the use of a transponder mounted on the windshield. The NORPASS website describes the organization as "a partnership of state and provincial agencies and trucking industry representatives who are committed to promoting safe and efficient trucking throughout North America. Truckers that register to participate in NORPASS receive a small transponder that signals to a computer in participating weigh stations. As the participating truck approaches the...

GENEVA (Reuters) – The prompt resolution of a 15-year old dispute over access to U.S. roads by Mexican trucks could be another casualty of the deadly swine flu outbreak, international trade experts said on Monday. Increased health checks to control the virus, which has killed 103 people in Mexico and infected at least 20 in the United States, could also slow the passage of goods across the busy but troubled U.S.-Mexico border, they said. The United States imported around $216 billion of goods from Mexico in 2008, making its southern neighbor its third-largest trading partner after Canada and China, according...

Anyone worried that, once in charge, Democrats wouldn't be vigilant in protecting our southern border can relax. The grave threat of Mexican long-haul truckers has been shut down. With any luck, Mexicans will never have the temerity to attempt to deliver commercial goods into the United States again. At least such is the fervid hope of the Teamsters, the fiercest adversary the Mexicans have faced since President James K. Polk sent Winfield Scott south in the Mexican-American War. The union can't abide Mexican trucks because they represent competition, and so they must be blocked - legal obligations, economic rationality and...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday sent a letter to the California congressional delegation urging it to restore the recently ended pilot program that allowed Mexican trucks to transport goods in the United States. "In this time of economic distress, when more than one in 10 Californians are out of work and the repercussions are felt throughout our great state, we must do all we can to boost trade with our international partners, not stifle it," Schwarzenegger wrote. "And yet I am afraid that the prohibition recently placed on Mexican truckers will do exactly that, with the result being markets functionally...