LaHood met with members of Congress on Capitol Hill, including Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., to discuss how a new pilot program could be fine-tuned to meet the concerns of critics who say Mexican law governing motor carrier safety is not comparable to U.S. requirements.
Mexico retaliated this month by slapping tariffs of 10 percent to 45 percent on 90 U.S. exports ranging from grapes to shampoo and cordless phones. The tariffs are expected to cost U.S. businesses $2.4 billion per year in lost sales.
Cross-border trucking is a requirement of the North American Free Trade Agreement and an arbitration panel has ruled Mexico has the right to take action against the United States.
'There is going to be a Mexican truck program and we want it to be one Congress can feel good about,' LaHood told reporters after a speech at the American Association of Port Authorities' Spring Conference in Washington.
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LaHood said DOT would soon issue a new plan and seek to get it approved by Congress.
'We're working long and hard on this. It's very important,' he said.
The effort includes outreach to the Mexican government to limit further damage to trade relations and get approval for new conditions. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is visiting Mexico City this week and President Barack Obama plans to do the same in mid-April.
Trade groups such as the Border Trade Alliance, National Association of Manufacturers and the American Association of Exporters and Importers have urged the Obama administration to reopen the border to Mexican trucks, which are limited to a small transfer zone along the border.
The pilot program began in September 2007. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration permitted up to 100 Mexican-based carriers to operate in the United States after they passed on-site safety reviews of road equipment, procedures, records and drivers. Mexico has a reciprocal effort in place for U.S. trucking companies. However, fewer carriers than expected signed up for the program.
A year ago, the DOT inspector general reported that the FMCSA was not double-checking U.S. Customs data to determine whether Mexican trucks were inspected every time they crossed the border.
But the agency tightened up oversight by also gathering insurance information on Mexican carriers, outfitting trucks with satellite tracking devices, taking steps to improve data on Mexican driver convictions in the United States and monitoring Mexican carrier records.
An independent panel commissioned by the DOT found that the Mexican carriers in the demonstration program were at least the equal of their domestic counterparts. After one year and 12,000 border crossings, no Mexican trucks in the program were involved in an accident and the driver out-of-service rate was 0.5 percent compared to 7.2 percent for U.S.-based carriers. Vehicle inspections determined Mexican trucks were out of service 8.2 percent of the time compared to 22.6 percent of the time for U.S. carriers. ' Eric Kulisch
