Editorial: Opening the Border, Slowly

The Department of Transportation acknowledged last week that President Bush’s pledge to open the border by Jan. 1 won’t be met because of requirements placed by Congress.

In fact, if the president hadn’t remained firm in his threat to veto the $60 billion transportation spending bill unless the Hill agreed to the border opening, it’s unlikely the compromise would have been reached at all.

Congress wanted complete safety audits of all Mexican carriers that applied for U.S. authority. Bush wanted Mexican carriers audited within 18 months of commencing operations, which is the same schedule imposed on U.S. carriers. Both had to give a little to come to an accord. As a result, DOT agents will visit half of the target carriers in Mexico before they start trucking in the United States, and half will receive conditional authority with full inspections to come within 18 months. But it will take time to get everything ready, and the administration’s Jan. 1 opening date will have to come later. But at least it will come.

Under the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement, the U.S.-Mexico border was to be opened to truck traffic in two stages starting in December 1995, but President Clinton, under pressure from the Teamsters and others, refused to honor the pact’s terms.

After an arbitration panel earlier this year ruled that the United States was in violation of the treaty and liable to trade sanctions by Mexico, President Bush told Mexican President Vicente Fox that he would comply with Nafta by the beginning of 2002.

At that time, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta warned Congress that Mexico would be within its rights to assess up to $1 billion a year in punitive tariffs on U.S. goods because of the delay in opening the border.

t is unclear how Mexico will respond to the new delays, and government officials have thus far declined to speak publicly.

Now that an agreement is in place, we can only hope that the Mexican government accepts the recent efforts as genuine and agrees to bide its time as DOT moves to comply with the compromise the White House and Congress crafted.

Once again, it’s a case of better late than never.

Mexico is already the United States’ second-largest trading partner, trailing only the third party of Nafta, Canada. Full implementation of Nafta is sure to increase trade among the three nations, which may be enough to have made the wait worthwhile for all parties.

This story appeared in the Dec. 10 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.