Teamsters, Public Citizen File Suit to Stop Cross-Border Pilot Program

The Teamsters and Public Citizen filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Transportation on Friday seeking to block cross-border trucking with Mexico. Several Mexican carriers have applied to participate in the program, which could start within weeks.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the suit was filed Friday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco against the DOT and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

The complaint alleges that the pilot program sets standards that aren't stringent enough for Mexican trucks and drivers. For example, the Journal reports, the program waives a law requiring trucks to display proof of meeting federal safety standards, said Jonathan Weissglass, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.

Meanwhile, the San Antonio Express-News is reporting that seven Mexican long-haul carriers have applied to make U.S. deliveries under the new cross-border trucking program, and two are close to approval.

Just two months ago, U.S. and Mexican officials signed an agreement to go ahead with a pilot program to start cross-border long-distance trucking as called for in the North American Free Trade Agreement signed in 1994.

Ever since then, the administration in office, Democrat or Republican, has looked for ways to implement the cross-border trucking provision of NAFTA, while the Teamsters union, OOIDA, safety advocacy groups and environmental groups looked for ways to scuttle the plan.

This time, Mexico upped the ante by levying retaliatory tariffs on 99 U.S. products. That tactic, which is costing more than $2 billion a year, brought U.S. food producers and their congressional representatives into the fight. Under the agreement, Mexico will start to phase out the tariffs when the program begins.

The agency intends to compare the performance of the Mexican carriers over three years against the performance of U.S. carriers. In the Bush administration's cross-border demonstration program, the agency found that the Mexican carriers had no accidents and much lower out-of-service rates than U.S. trucks and drivers. There were not enough Mexican carriers in the program to create a statistically valid sample, however, a shortcoming the agency hopes to correct with this program.