The Obama administration is close to finishing a plan to revive long-distance trucking across the U.S.-Mexican border.


Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Thursday that the White House is vetting a plan he hopes take to Congress for clearance in June. His aim is to address the concerns about safety that Congress cited when it cut off funding for the Bush administration's limited cross-border program.

LaHood also said that the tariffs on some 90 U.S. products that Mexico imposed in retaliation for that cutoff have been very effective. "Now Senators and members of the House are hearing from their producer groups about the huge impact that these tariffs are having on these 90 items that they put tariffs on," he said.

LaHood did not go into details but did say that the plan he put together after consulting with some 30 members of Congress addresses their concerns about safety.

"Almost everything we have done within the proposal has to do with safety," he said. "There's good metrics for testing safety on the mechanical part of the trucks, good metrics for judging whether drivers are complying with the hours of service (and) good metrics to determine if drivers have licenses that have been issued according to all the rules and regulations."