Even after living in the
But no problem. Oscar Meyer bacon along with Hormel has been available in my supermarket here for many years. This along with many imported foodstuffs from the US.
But in the past few months, the only bacon available from Oscar Meyer is turkey bacon. What gives? And then I realized that México has placed high import duties on imported pork products from the US, along with other agricultural products. And this is due to the US refusal to live up to the original NAFTA agreement that would allow foreign (Mexican) trucks to deliver imported goods into the US interior. It should also be noted that Canadian trucks have had this privilege for years.
It is Hoffa and his Teamster’s union that is at the forefront on this issue. His point is that Mexican trucks are “not safe”. The result is that any Mexican trucks with US bound goods can only go across the border and unload their goods. Then the loads are reloaded onto Teamster driven US trucks to complete the journey. And this raises the cost of shipment of these goods and puts México at a disadvantage with Canadian producers who can drive their own trucks into the US interior.
After official complaints that the US was not following the NAFTA agreement, the US offered to conduct testing on truck safety for a set period in the US and report on the findings concerning the safety of Mexican trucks on US highways.
About the time that the results were pointing to the fact that not only were the Mexican driven trucks as safe as American driven trucks, they were safer than either the US and Canadian average. So, at Hoffa’s insistence, the administration and congress folded and canceled the testing program before completion.
México went to the World Trade Organization and brought suit against the US. And the WTO agreed with México and authorized punitive tariffs to be put into place. And after no action by the US on this issue, México is set to drastically increase more tariffs on even more US products. And this is hurting a lot of producers in the US that export to México.
So, there goes my bacon, thanks to Jimmy Hoffa. But this is but one more example of the US agreeing to rules that apply to others but not living up to them themselves.
A little like the “Washington Consensus” that asks that foreign countries live within their budgets. What a laugh that is. But you don’t hear much about that nowadays do you?
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Richard N. Baldwin T., a HispanicVista.com (www.hispanicvista.com) contributing columnist, lives in Tlalnepantla, Edo de México. E-mail at: [email protected]
I might suggest that if Obama wants more respect abroad, his administration should start living up to what they preach and stop the “Don’t do as I do but do as I preach” attitude. And that goes for the US Hoffa driven congress also.
As for Hoffa, might I suggest that he try to recruit Mexican drivers into his Teamsters union? Or is he afraid to?
Now a note on something else, recent polls are showing that there might probably be a shift in the next presidential election. The overwhelming possible candidate for the next presidency is the young popular governor of the state of México, Mexico’s most populous state. He is from the PRI party, which 10 years ago was unseated as the ruling party after a 71-year reign. Our present president, as his first official action, declared a full war on the drug cartels here that are the exporters feeding the drug habits north of our border.
After four years and 31,000 deaths (mostly drug cartel members), the Mexican population is tiring of the ever increasing violence in our northern states. The more cartel heads eliminated the more replacement heads are of the “young Turk” and more violent variety. Along with the drug business, they are into human trafficking. They will take migrants hostage and demand stiff additional payments before taking them across the border. If the migrant’s families cannot come up with the price, they simply kill the migrants. Sometimes more than dozens at a time. Recently there was a mass killing of 76 migrants whose families could not meet the cash demands for “ransom payments”. This even goes on north of the border.
The Mexican perception is that México is loosing this war. And with a political change in the making, expect a changed policy in this war. And to the US Border States . . . be aware of what might be coming.