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 News from Around the Americas | July 2007 
House Vote Keeps Mexican Truckers Inside Border Zone
 John Hughes - Bloomberg News
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 |  | This will be a tremendous step toward protecting the American traveling public.
- Rep. Peter DeFazio |  | |
Tucson, Arizona - Mexican trucks would be barred from traveling beyond U.S. border areas for a year under a House vote that would block a test program by the Bush administration.
The program, which would allow 100 Mexican transportation companies to carry cargo into the United States beyond a 25-mile border area, couldn't begin in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, the House decided Tuesday in approving an amendment on a voice vote.
"This will be a tremendous step toward protecting the American traveling public," Rep. Peter DeFazio, the Oregon Democrat who sponsored the amendment, said before the vote in Washington.
The vote is a victory for auto-safety groups and labor unions such as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters that have been fighting the pilot program, saying the Mexican trucks wouldn't meet safety standards.
The Bush administration planned to begin the test in April. Requirements imposed by Congress have bottled it up since then, and there is no start date, said Melissa Mazzella DeLaney, a spokeswoman for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
Restrictions against trucks leaving border areas were struck down in 2001 by North American Free Trade Agreement arbiters, who ruled that the curbs violated the 1994 trade accord among the United States, Mexico and Canada.
The United States was told to open the border to Mexican trucks or pay compensation, though the United States could enforce safety and driver-training standards it deemed appropriate.
DeFazio's amendment was inserted into legislation to fund transportation and housing programs in the next fiscal year. That broader legislation, which is still being debated on the House floor, has been targeted for a Bush veto for what the administration calls excessive spending. |
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