Setting up a new cross-border trucking program will likely be high on the agenda when President Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon meet in Mexico City Thursday and Friday.


In March, President Obama signed an appropriations bill that cut off funding for a controversial cross-border trucking pilot program with Mexico. Mexico retaliated with tariffs, and the administration said it wants to come up with an alternative approach to cross-border trucking.

Under the North American Free Trade Agreement, the crossing was supposed to have been opened to border-state traffic in 1995 and to long-distance traffic in 2000. The opening was stalled until 2007, in part by difficult negotiations with Mexico, but mainly by the legislative and legal tactics of U.S. labor, owner-operator and citizen advocacy groups who fear loss of U.S. jobs to Mexican drivers and argue that Mexican trucks will not be safe.

According to published reports, Mexican transportation officials not only want to see the cross-border pilot program re-established in some form, but want the Obama administration to go even further.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has sent the White House recommendations for ending the NAFTA trucking dispute, reports the Reuters news agency, but administration officials have declined to say what those recommendations include. LaHood has met with 23 members of Congress and various business and labor groups as he works to reopen the border to Mexican trucks.