Pork becomes pawn in US-Mexico trade dispute
Des Moines Register • August 16, 2010
Pork becomes pawn in U.S.-Mexico trade dispute
Dan Piller
Mexico has put U.S. pork on its list of retaliatory goods in response to what it says is unfair restriction by the U.S. of Mexican truckers, in violation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Pork was not on the original list of goods approved for retaliation by Mexico in what has been determined by an independent panel to be the U.S.’ violation of NAFTA by restricting the entry of Mexican trucks into the U.S. But Mexico added pork on Monday.
“Mexico’s retaliation against U.S. pork will have negative economic consequences for America’s pork producers,” said National Pork Producers Council President Sam Carney, a producer from Adair. “We are extremely disappointed that our top volume export market has taken this action, but we’re more disappointed that the United States is not living up to its trade obligations.”
Carney said that in 2009 Mexico bought $762 million worth of U.S. pork.
The truck issue is sensitive in Texas, where truckers protested allowing Mexican trucks to cross the U.S. border and continued their runs into t he interior of the U.S. rather than off-load onto American trucks.
The U.S. Congress in early March 2009 failed to renew a pilot program that allowed a limited number of Mexican trucks to haul freight into United States beyond a 25-mile commercial zone. The cross-Border Trucking Pilot Program was started by the U.S. Department of Transportation in September 2007 as a way to begin implementing the NAFTA trucking provision, which was supposed to take effect in December 1995.
