Groups Ask Court to Block U.S. From Opening Roads to Mexican Truckers

Environmental, labor and trucking groups filed Monday for an emergency injunction to stop the Bush administration from opening U.S. roadways to Mexican truckers, claiming that the move would substantially increase diesel emissions in areas already suffering from poor air quality, such as Los Angeles.

The federal appeals court in San Francisco gave the government until Wednesday to respond.

At the same time, legislators and a trucking association in Mexico bristled at regulations they said were tougher on Mexican truckers than on those from Canada and urged their government to limit the entry of U.S. trucks in retaliation.

President Bush directed transportation officials last week to begin processing permit applications from Mexico-based trucking firms, signaling an end to a 1982 regulation that restricted such trucks to commercial zones within 20 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. Trucks could start rolling north as early as the middle of the month.

The U.S. government had been under pressure to allow the flow of trucks in order to comply with the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the subject may have been raised at a meeting last month between Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Mexican President Vicente Fox.

“This administration has consistently expressed its support for full compliance with NAFTA,” White House spokeswoman Clare Buchan said Monday. “This has been in the works for some time.”

But opponents of the rule change said the timing, coming just before the four-day Thanksgiving holiday, was intended to mute criticism.

“There’s going to be trucking people hurt on both sides of the border,” said Armando Freire of San Diego-based Dimex Trucking. With his fleet of 20 trucks, Freire primarily picks up loads from Mexican firms at the border and delivers them to Los Angeles.

“They do their part, I do mine and everybody’s happy,” he said. “Now all of the sudden we lose control of the freight because a carrier can take that to L.A. for one-third the cost.”

Small operators in Mexico also had argued against the rule change, fearing that U.S.-based corporations would consolidate the trucking industry, turning them from independent operators to employees.

In the U.S., opposition to the rule change came from many quarters, leading to the unlikely coalition behind Monday’s court filing.

That group includes the Environmental Law Foundation, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the California Trucking Assn. Both the Teamsters and the trucking group face competition from Mexico for jobs and trucking contracts if the rule change is not blocked.

In May, the same group filed suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco to stop the rule change, arguing that the Bush administration skirted the environmental review process and demanding a full assessment of the effect of Mexican trucks operating throughout the U.S.

Oral arguments were heard in early October and a ruling is expected soon. Al Meyerhoff, an attorney for the coalition, said he was stunned when he heard of the administration’s announcement Wednesday, given that the suit is unresolved. The brief filed Monday argued that no change should proceed until the court decides whether a more detailed assessment of environmental effects is needed.

“The whole point of conducting the environmental reviews is to allow the government to take environmental effects into account before making the operative decision and putting it into effect,” the filing said.

The plaintiffs argue that Mexican trucks pollute more than do U.S. rigs because of less stringent air-quality standards in Mexico and because the trucks tend to be older.

Proponents of the change counter that Mexican trucks are subject to the same environmental and safety regulations as U.S. trucks.

Despite the uproar, the American Trucking Assn., which has favored the rule change, contends that there will be little immediate consequence. “It’s going to be an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary process,” said Martin Rojas, director for cross-border operations for the Virginia-based group. He noted that only 130 Mexican firms have applied for permits to operate in the U.S. Of those, 60 have been approved pending audits.

“In Mexico, a very large company has 150 trucks,” Rojas said. “There are about 2.6 million Class A trucks in the United States. We’re talking about a speck in the trucking universe of the United States.”

Mexican truckers agreed that few would immediately take advantage of the opening, largely because of safety restrictions imposed by Congress last summer. According to CANACAR, the largest Mexican trucking association, only about 30,000 of the 140,000 trucks it represents meet U.S. safety and environmental standards for hauling cargo north of the border.