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 News from Around the Americas | March 2007 
Teamsters Oppose Mexican Trucks in U.S.
 Mark Gruenberg - Associated Press
Washington - The Teamsters union vowed to oppose a new Bush administration pilot program allowing Mexican trucks to travel nationwide, rather than just in the 20-mile border zone in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California.
Those Mexican trucks will only roll after they have met U.S. safety and inspection standards, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said, adding facilities for those inspections have been set up.
Peters' statement, which defies previous findings from her own department's Inspector General, irked Teamsters President James Hoffa, who has led the campaign to keep the Mexican trucks confined to the border zone. NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, was written to allow a free flow of truck traffic across the border, but safety concerns have delayed implementation of that provision.
"They are playing a game of Russian Roulette on America's highways," Hoffa said of Bush's Mexican trucks plan. "Mexico refuses to meet their end of the bargain yet Bush rewards them with open access to American highways. It is the American driving public who will pay the consequences." He called on Congress to hold hearings "to put an end to this nonsense."
"Where is the Inspector's General report that tells us Mexico is meeting U.S. standards? Why is the president willing to move forward when his own Inspector General stated Mexico cannot meet its obligations?" Hoffa said, noting another Transportation Department IG report on the Mexican trucks is due in a few months.
"The DOT has indicated that 'this is as narrow experiment' as they could initiate. Yet it is an experiment that allows 100 companies and an unknown number of Mexican trucks onto our highways and forces the U.S. traveling public to serve as guinea pigs," Hoffa said. "That is unacceptable." |
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