Last Friday the first long-haul Mexican truck entered the United States, fulfilling its express design. Mexican trucks should have been allowed onto U.S. interstates by 2000, but lobbying by the Teamsters union kept Mexican trucks within an earshot of the border. U.S. dithering has been clearly unfair (Canadian trucks have traversed America’s highways without conditions), and illegal (NAFTA explicitly allows commercial trucks into neighboring countries).
A small pilot program started by President George W. Bush in 2007 got nixed shortly after President Obama took office. Irked, Mexico announced $2 billion in retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods.
Though Mexican businesses may have lost billions of dollars in revenue from the blockage, the owner of Transportes Olympic was gracious, saying that his truck crossing the border en route to a Dallas suburb was like being invited into a friend’s house. At the wheel, Josue Cruz waved to a crowd of reporters as brought his big rig to a halt at the Laredo, Texas, border crossing station.
Instead of rehashing the debate about how wrong-headed Washington has been, I choose to see this as a positive step that may lead to significant economic benefits. Bruno Ferrari, Mexico’s secretary of the economy, said, “With this program, we’re initiating a new stage of competition, of prosperity, of regional integration.” True, only 10 Mexican truck companies are going through the trusted carrier certification process. But panning out, Mexico is set to take on much of the manufacturing of goods currently made in China. Even the US is about experience a “manufacturing renaissance,” according to a recent Boston Consulting Group report. As manufacturing returns to North America, firms are bound to revisit the synergies created through research and production in the US and Mexico.
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