Comment: Progress With or Without Nafta

With or without the North American Free Trade Agreement, it will be business as usual at CFI. If the transportation provisions of Nafta were completely implemented, it would certainly change some of the challenges we face in crossborder transportation. But it wouldn’t change our overall strategy to offer the best North American truckload service possible.

We learned early in our commitment that we have to honor and respect the culture and heritage of our customers and business partners. With Mexico in particular, we had to learn to be flexible in some of our practices. In that experience, we have come to appreciate the loyalty that comes from having personal relationships with our carrier partners and customers — not just “business” relationships.

I believe it’s important that all of us in the transportation industry give our input both politically and personally to help shape the global environment we work in.

We must recognize that manufacturing and distribution needs will change based on many factors not in our control. Goods made in Asia one year may be made in Mexico the next and possibly in Central or South America thereafter.

Requirements for a quality transportation service will not change, just the pickup and delivery points.

Similarly, full implementation of Nafta’s trucking provisions will not change the need for quality transportation service, only the pickup and delivery points.

While Nafta may greatly reduce the border crossing hurdles we have to contend with, rest assured there will be plenty of new and different hurdles we all must face. Business between the U.S. and Canada certainly indicates this. While that border is essentially open for the international transport of goods, I think every U.S. truckload carrier that serves Canada would agree that there are still plenty of obstacles that hinder a smooth transit.

However, I believe that with or without Nafta, we will continue to see the relaxing of border bottlenecks. This has been the case with the U.S., Canada and Mexico for the past two decades as the raw material and manufacturing co-dependency among our countries has increased. Recently, there have been numerous openings of free trade zones in Mexico, and an increasing number of customs clearances are now taking place within the U.S.

North American international trade has a lot of momentum, and I don’t expect it to slow down much in the next five to 10 years. Too much money and time have been invested to stop the progress.

At this point, I see the implementation of Nafta as a sideshow to the feature that is already playing.