Posted on 09/10/2007 9:04:44 PM PDT by NapkinUser
Another NAFTA nail is about to be hammered into the coffin Washington is building for the US economy. Within the next few days our borders will be opened to the Mexican trucking industry in an unprecedented way. A "pilot" program is starting which will allow trucks from Mexico to haul goods beyond the 25 mile buffer zone to any point in the United States . Officials claim this is being done with utmost oversight, but Americans still have their legitimate concerns. Rather than securing our borders, we seem to be providing more pores for illegal aliens, drug dealers, and terrorists to permeate.
Not only that, but the anti-competitive and burdensome yoke of over-regulation of our industry at home is about to send a lot more Americans to the unemployment lines. The American Trucking industry has been heavily regulated since 1935. The express purpose of The Motor Carrier Act was to eliminate competition through permitting, regulating tariff rates, even approving routes. American trucking companies have been fighting ever since for some relief from the substantial regulatory burdens placed on them. Regulatory compliance is the single most daunting barrier to entry, and eats up huge amounts of profit. Now, to add insult to injury, Mexican trucking companies, not subject to the same onerous standards, will be allowed to roll right in and squeeze American industry further. This will severely undermine the ability of American trucking companies to remain solvent.
The fact that this is being done in the name of free trade is disturbing. Free trade is not complicated, yet NAFTA and CAFTA are comprised of thousands of pages of complicated legal jargon. All free trade really needs is two words: Low tariffs. Free trade does not require coordination with another government to benefit citizens here. Just like domestic businesses don't pay taxes, foreign businesses do not pay tariffs – consumers do, in the form of higher prices. If foreign governments want to hurt their own citizens with protectionist tariffs, let them. But let us set a good example here, and show the world an honest example of true free trade. And let us stop hurting American workers with mountains of red tape in the name of safety. Safety standards should be set privately, by the industry and by the insurance companies who have the correct motivating factors to do so.
Free trade is not the problem, and pseudo free trade is what is being offered in the wrongly named North American Free Trade Agreement and all its offshoots. The problem is a government-managed economy and the burdensome regulation that results. For our economy to remain competitive in the world, we must remember what it is to be truly free. We must lift the regulatory shackles threatening to sink our industries into oblivion. Free trade begins with freedom domestically, and we can't afford to lose that.
It would make sense to relieve the regulatory burden on our trucks if they are expected to compete with Mexico’s largely unregulated trucking industry.
This is one of the problems with “free trade” as it is currently practiced, we still have very old laws regulating our industries, and our competition does not face that same barrier to entry into our markets.
Rhyming? Where did you get the idea someone trying to rhyme?
If we're going to saddle our industries with costly environmental and safety regulations, payroll taxes, etc., tariffs should reflect the differential in these mandates.
If you buy into the democratic conspiracy theory, that was the goal of Reagan-GOP-Federalist Society-VRWC.
The VRWC would include the anti-regulatory provisions in the investor protections in NAFTA, then CAFTA, and eventually FTAA.
After that was accomplished, and you have one set of regulatory laws for the hemisphere and one set of regulatory laws for the US, then a SCOTUS composed of Federalists(appointed by GOP presidents) would rule that US regulatory law was un-constitutional.
Whereas the GOP-VRWC would never be able to legislatively undo all the regulatory laws that the dems have put in place, a GOP-VRWC SCOTUS could, in one ruling.
US companies have bailing out of the country to avoid the excessive regulation. They have been locating in countries with lower standards to provide the American public with products that do not cost an arm and a leg. Low prices are why Wal-Mart type stores are so popular.
Every time someone complains about a product issue, a whole slew of laws, regulations, and oversight agencies are adopted, with an increase in product prices to the consumer to cover the compliance costs.
Regulatory compliance is the single most daunting barrier to entry, and eats up huge amounts of profit. Now, to add insult to injury, Mexican trucking companies, not subject to the same onerous standards, will be allowed to roll right in and squeeze American industry further.
It is the dual standards and over regulation of our industry that is the issue here. We can no longer compete effectively. We end up requiring new regulations to cover the short-sightedness of the old regulations. Then come the tarrifs and subsidies so we can remain competitive. Who ends up paying? We, the consumer.
Lessen those regulations on our industry and we can market competitive products at competitive prices, and producers can still make a profit.
Or bang foreign products without these burdens with a tariff to make up the difference. I don't think tariffs should reflect wage differences. We will just have to work smarter to maintain our standard of living. If the foreigners catch up in the regulation sphere, the tariff goes away.
China charges a 17% tariff on our products. They have some balls, with their slave labor and brown clouds.
Exactly. All this crap costs money, and it does drive ultimately product costs or put our companies, our employers, out of business. The dems and greenies pretend it's free.
My position on tariffs is to use them as leverage to decrease our own costs of regulation, or to encourage the foreigners to come into spec.
B T T T
My position on tariffs is to use them as leverage to decrease our own costs of regulation,
I can agree with that.
If that CEO can't make a buck, he's just going to raise prices until he can. We end up paying.
Not all restrictions are beneficial to the consumer. Gore's "carbon credit" BS is a good example. If industry if forced to buy carbon offsets, we'll pay the cost.
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