Free trade and safe highways

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Washington Sen. Patty Murray led a strong, appropriate effort to require tougher safety standards for Mexican trucks entering the United States.

The White House and Republican leadership waged a phony war against this highway-safety measure with claims it undermined the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement and relations with our neighbor.

Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., stooped so low as to suggest the effort was anti-Mexican. Poppycock. This is about improving standards for Mexican trucks that are 50 percent more likely to fail U.S. inspections than American vehicles.

Nineteen Republicans joined Senate Democrats to knock down parliamentary attempts to tie up the requirements for regular U.S. inspections of Mexican trucks and drivers, on-site audits of Mexican trucking firms, and more scales and inspectors at 27 U.S. border stations.

Suggesting inspections will inhibit free trade is more than a bit disingenuous given that current law keeps Mexican trucks within a 20-mile zone along the U.S. border. Earlier this summer, the House of Representatives passed a harsh measure to block any Mexican trucks from venturing beyond that zone.

Opening U.S. highways to Mexico's trucking industry is in the full spirit of NAFTA, as long as the trucks are safe and insured. This is hardly onerous. Indeed, Canadian trucks and truckers have a better inspection record than U.S. trucks.

Don't make too much of the Teamsters Union backing the safety measure, as if to suggest it was a topic with heavy labor influence. Only a fraction of U.S. drivers are represented by organized labor. This fight is fundamentally about highway safety.

Creating a haven of lesser standards south of the border might invite the U.S. trucking industry to essentially re-flag their fleets where regulations are lax.

At the same time, Congress must not create a system of rules and standards that are thinly veiled trade barriers. Murray and Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., transportation committee allies on this effort, are not headed in that direction.

The White House wants to make sure NAFTA is supported and that Mexico is nurtured as a friend, ally and trading partner. But the Bush administration's garbled, inconsistent response on truck safety only confused matters.

Opening America's roads to Mexican trucks and truckers is in the best spirit of free trade. Expecting those rigs to be adequately maintained and insured is a modest price to pay for access to the world's most-prosperous consumer market.