Friends,
May I interest you in a JUICY NEW REPORT "THE COMING NAFTA CRASH" on the controversial NAFTA truck case - which coincidentially just came out today from the tribunal!
This case is the classic example of how corporate managed "trade" agreements are undermining basic public health, safety and environmental safeguards - and feuling a global backlash.
As our consumer advocate allies in Mexico would note, the absence of a truck or highway safety system there means traffic fatalities in Mexico are 3 times the US or Canadian rate. The Mexican government promisd in 1994 when NAFTA went into effect to establish such a system - but, seven years late: nope.
And now, thanks to a NAFTA tribunal whose ruling is released to the governments today (and of course is not being made available to the press or public) - the U.S. is being ordered to provide access to all US highways to these dangerous trucks. On a "confidential" press call just now, USTR refused to say how they would respond to the order - only that the panel ruled the US must open, Bush has always believed NAFTA provisions on trucking should be implemented, but they also would not answer any of the press questions about saftey issues/enforcement and also would not say if they intended to open the border or "comply is some other way...".
You can see the fine political mess they are in: It was easy for Gov. Bush to chide Pres. Clinton to open the border as NAFTA required even when the Department of Transportation's own Inspector General found that was a VERY bad idea.
But, NOW if Bush opens the border, WHEN (because it is when, not if) the inevitable NAFTA crashes occur, the deaths are on his hands.
Moreover, the viage of a horrific NAFTA truck crash happening in a community near you becomes the new face of NAFTA. If the 1997 NAFTA strawberriy-hepititis poisoning tanked Fast Track, Pres. Bush must be wondering what the inevitable NAFTA truck crashes would do to his plans to expand NAFTA with FTAA and to his push for Fast Track!
The basic UTR spin s to focus on one sentence of happy horseshit legalese in the panel ruling which says the US can "maintain its domestic saftey standards." Of course the laws can stay on the books, that was NEVER in question.
The issue is can the U.S. ENFORCE its standards and ENSURE saftey? The Clinton people really really wanted to open to border, but they knew the answer to this question was NO given the state of Mexican truck safety policy, there is no way to allow full access and still ensure safety.
The question USTR does not want to hear: if the NAFTA tribunal says we must open our border AND Mexican still has no domestic regulatory system for truck safety AND as a result over a third of the Mexican trucks now crossing the border have such serious problems they are taken out of service (much higher than US truck rate), how it is we would still be able to ensure saftey on US roads???? (I specifically asked on the press call: with seven million trucks predicted and now inspectors, how can you enforce saftey? Answer: we are not addressing those questions at this time.)
They might try to answer that the US could inspect every truck, which is what the industry says - but they know this is totally a sham.
We now have 170 border inspectors total (state and fed) who can only cover 35,000-40,000 of the 4 million Mexican trucks crossing NOW. DOT says another 3 million would bne added if the border is opened fully. If you do the math, to inspect each of those would require 10,000 inspectors - and basically building so much new border inspection infrastructure that the whole border would be one set of side-by-side inspection lanes...
Nothing to do from the consumer saftey perspective but keep limited access for these trucks UNTIL Mexico gets the domestic system its own residents deserve AND the U.S. considerably increase its current inspection for the 4 million trucks entering the border zone now allowed - given 99% of the trucks go by totally uninspected and DOT's IG reports that over 1/3 of those would be put out of service fi they were inspected...
Also in report: Mexican driver working conditions aka Maquiladoras on wheels, conditions in Mexican side of border crsssings, data on Texas highway fatailies increasing from Mexican trucks in border zone, exact comparison of US and Mexican truck standards/ law, new crunch of new raw data form DOT comparing all US and all Mexican carrier allowed on US road
Please get the report on: http://www.tradewatch.org/nafta/reports/truckstudy.htm Or call us for a hard copy! The news release is attached
Best, Lori
Lori M. Wallach Director Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch 215 Pennsylvania Ave SE Washington, DC USA 20003 1-202-546-4996 1-202-547-7392 (fax) www.tradewatch.org:
