Free Republic

Due to economic instability, in January of 2000, then Ecuadorian President Jamil Mahuad instituted a policy instating the United States dollar as the official currency of Ecuador. Despite disapproval of the policy by current Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa’s administration, no plans are currently in the works to replace the US dollar as the official currency. However, the administration has indicated that it would replace the US dollar in favor of a South American currency if one became available. The dollar replaced "sucres" in Ecuador, at a rate of 1 for every 25,000 sucres. While Ecuador has officially replaced their own...

After years of negative votes in Congress and the opposition of the American people, on Oct. 21 Barack Obama allowed the first Mexican truck to cross the border at Laredo, Texas, and head north to deliver door-to-door service of its industrial equipment. This was implemented by an agreement quietly signed by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood in Mexico City on July 6 with Mexico's secretary of Communications and Transportation. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., calls this deal a major anti-jobs program saying, "We're literally taking good jobs here in America and passing them over the line to Mexico." Todd Spencer, executive vice...

SAN ANTONIO - The first Mexican long-haul truck bound for the U.S. interior crossed at the international bridge at Laredo, Texas, Friday, carrying electronic equipment destined for suburban Dallas and fulfilling a controversial provision of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement. Business leaders on both sides of the Rio Grande praised the move while sign-waving Teamsters Union members in Laredo jeered. NAFTA called for Mexican trucks to be allowed to travel beyond a six- to 25-mile wide "commercial zone" in the United States by December 1995. However, concerns about the safety of Mexican trucks, the opposition of the Teamsters...

The first Mexican carrier is set to roll into the U.S. interior within days, but the Teamsters union and two California congressmen haven't given up on stopping the cross-border trucking program that had been stalled for years by safety concerns and political wrangling. U.S. Reps. Duncan Hunter and Bob Filner joined Teamsters President James Hoffa at the border Wednesday to take a bipartisan stand against the pilot project that will allow approved Mexican trucks to come deep into the United States. The first one will enter Texas on Friday. Hunter is a San Diego-area Republican, while Filner is a Democrat...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama signed off Friday on the first three — and possibly last — free trade agreements of his administration, deals with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama that could be worth billions to American exporters and create tens of thousands of jobs. The three deals were years in the making, and the difficulty of bringing them to fruition make it unlikely there will be another bilateral trade agreement during Obama's current term. Obama signed them with none of the ceremonial fanfare that normally accompanies such triumphs. Republicans, while supportive of the deals, continue to find fault...

SAN DIEGO (CBS) — Union and trucking industry leaders joined a pair of Southland lawmakers on Wednesday to warn Americans about a potential economic fallout if Mexican trucks are allowed to travel unchecked across the border. Reps. Bob Filner (D-San Diego), and Duncan D. Hunter (R-El Cajon) joined James Hoffa of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and Todd Spencer, the owner-operator of the Independent Drivers Association, to voice their concerns over the bilateral pilot project that is set to roll into the U.S. interior within days. The bipartisan group argues that allowing Mexican trucking companies to travel into the U.S....

While on a bus tour this week across a midwest ravaged by deindustrialisation, President Barack Obama has ironically been touting job-killing free trade agreements. Mitt Romney deemed the road trip, which goes through an archipelago of shuttered factories and mills, as Obama's "Magical Misery Tour", though the former governor and CEO would undoubtedly promote the same free trade policies even more fervently. Obama won Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois in 2008, but is set to lose them in 2012 if he remains on the free trade bandwagon. Last week, he visited Michigan, the epicentre of American manufacturing's decimation. A May report...

Move over Mitt Romney. Rick Perry has a bigger problem to defend from his tenure as governor. Remember the NAFTA Superhighway project? It was to consist of a two-mile wide $184 billion transit system of toll roads, rail lines and utilities from the Texas-Mexico border all the way up to the Minnesota-Canadian border, to make it easier to ship foreign goods from China and other countries into North America. It became so unpopular in Texas that the Texas portion of it, called the Trans-Texas Corridor, was renamed and mostly disbanded a couple of years ago. Perry was the only gubernatorial...

Is this something Tea Party should take as a cause? Usually Republican party is for Free Trade, but its time we keep our jobs right here in this great country of ours. Can Tea Party change the conversation on trade issues?

WASHINGTON, July 8, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Obama administration's decision to sign an agreement allowing Mexican truckers full access to U.S. roads poses a threat to national security, American motorists, our ability to control illegal immigration, and to the viability of the U.S. trucking industry, charges the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). The agreement was signed in Mexico City on Wednesday by Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood without notice from the administration. "Implementation of this provision of NAFTA has been on hold for 17 years with good reason," stated Dan Stein, president of FAIR. "Since President Clinton signed the...

MEXICO CITY – Mexico and the United States have signed an agreement that will allow cargo trucks from each country to circulate without restriction on the other nation’s highways, ending a long-running dispute. The memorandum was signed here by the heads of Mexico’s Communications and Transportation Secretariat and the U.S. Department of Transportation as a follow-up to an accord reached in March by Presidents Barack Obama and Felipe Calderon. Under the terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexican trucks were to have been able to circulate freely throughout the U.S. roadway system as soon as the trade pact...

MEXICO CITY (AP) — U.S. and Mexican officials signed an agreement Wednesday allowing each country's trucks to traverse the other's highways, implementing a key provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement after nearly two decades of bickering. Transportation secretaries Ray LaHood and Dionisio Perez-Jacome signed the three-year memorandum, which is based on an agreement announced in March by Presidents Barack Obama and Felipe Calderon. NAFTA, signed in 1994, had called for Mexican trucks to have unrestricted access to highways in border states by 1995 and full access to all U.S. highways by January 2000. Canadian trucks have no limits...

Barack Obama’s deal with the president of Mexico to allow Mexican trucks to carry their loads onto U.S. highways and roads is new evidence of his high-handed solo behavior that has become Standard Operating Procedure in the Administration. Here are ten reasons why Obama’s plan is dangerous and must be stopped by Congress and public protest. 1. Obama’s deal with President Felipe Calderon, announced on March 3, bypasses Congress, defies the wishes of the American people, and looks like the action of a Third World dictator who thinks representative government is a nuisance and can be ignored.

OTTAWA — The integration of North America’s economies would best be achieved through an “incremental” approach, according to a leaked U.S. diplomatic cable. The cable, released through the WikiLeaks website and apparently written Jan. 28, 2005, discusses some of the obstacles surrounding the merger of the economies of Canada, the United States and Mexico in a fashion similar to the European Union. “An incremental and pragmatic package of tasks for a new North American Initiative (NAI) will likely gain the most support among Canadian policymakers,” the document said. “The economic payoff of the prospective North American initiative … is available,...

Donald Trump’s short-lived presidential campaign wasn’t the first to try to make Communist China the villain in our economic debate… but he did feature it more prominently in his attempt at populism than most do. Others choose NAFTA as their whipping post, since everybody’s heard of it, and its birth at the hands of both Bush I and Clinton makes it an easy target for folks who want to pin the blame on the domestic establishment, rather than a foreign culprit across the sea. Unfortunately for their case, they’re both wrong. The cause of our economic doldrums is much closer...

TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico - Police on Tuesday detained 513 undocumented migrants from Latin America and Asia who were crammed into two trucks bound for the United States, prosecutors in southeast Mexico said. The migrants, from Latin America, Japan, China, India and Nepal, "were traveling in inhuman conditions" in the southeastern state of Chiapas, near the Guatemalan border, the local attorney general's office said in a statement. Police stopped the trucks, carrying 240 and 273 people, on the outskirts of state capital Tuxtla Gutierrez early Tuesday, after they accelerated through a vehicle scanner at a police checkpoint, the statement said. Officers...

snip Integration is a little-used term employed mainly by policy wonks. But while it may sound relatively harmless, it generally describes a very serious phenomenon when used in a geopolitical context — the gradual merging of separate countries under a regional authority. Similar processes are already well underway in Europe, Africa, and South America. And according to critics, the results — essentially abolishing national sovereignty in favor of supranational, unaccountable governance — have been an unmitigated disaster. But the U.S. government doesn’t think so. In North America, integration has been proceeding rapidly for years. The New American magazine was among...

In the latest effort to accommodate its cherished trade partner in the south, the U.S. government is paying to upgrade outdated Mexican trucks that hemorrhage illegal amounts of exhaust on their trips north to deliver merchandise.

In the latest effort to accommodate its cherished trade partner in the south, the U.S. government is paying to upgrade outdated Mexican trucks that hemorrhage illegal amounts of exhaust on their trips north to deliver merchandise. The Mexican trucks enter the U.S. under a 17-year-old international trade pact known as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and they’ve created an air pollution crisis. The air quality in border towns has been especially impacted by the exorbitant levels of exhaust released by the Mexican trucks, which also fail to meet American safety standards. Since the Mexican truckers have no...

WASHINGTON — The final agreement to end a 2-year-old trucking dispute between the U.S. and Mexico "should be weeks, if not days" away, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said Thursday. At a lunch meeting with reporters, the highest-ranking Texan in the Obama administration said U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Mexican Transportation Minister Humberto Treviño are close to signing the deal that will end an impasse that has cost American businesses about $5 billion in retaliatory tariffs imposed by Mexico. "This could not have been better news and it could not have happened soon enough" for Texas and California agriculture...

President Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderón agreed Thursday to remove most restrictions on trucking across the U.S.-Mexico border, sparking furor from the Teamsters and raising concerns for truckers on both sides of the border — for different reasons. The American Trucking Association praised the announcement, saying it will promote trade. The Teamsters and certain trucking companies oppose the deal, saying it sacrifices American jobs when unemployment is high so that big business can save money partly by hiring cheaper drivers. The Obama-Calderón plan comes 17 years after passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which permitted cross-border...

Hey Freepers, On the subject of free trade, unions and patriotism. Earlier this morning I was thinking about the goings on in Wisconsin, and about a purchase I wanted to make later today, and I started thinking. All my life I have been told to buy things "Made in America." I have done so as much as was possible, and buy locally, if I can, but I was recently thinking about the union goings on in Wisconsin. I have been spending money on "American" tools, vehicles, clothing, foods, etc. as much as I can find, but I recently have though,...

MEXICO CITY - As his fellow officer was dying in the seat beside him after gunmen ambushed their vehicle this week, U.S. special agent Victor Avila, wounded himself, telephoned the U.S. Embassy here to shout that they were under attack. Avila and Jaime Zapata were traveling in an armored Chevrolet Suburban with diplomatic license plates on a popular four-lane highway four hours north of Mexico City. They were returning from a meeting with fellow agents in Monterrey, who had met them at a halfway point near San Luis Potosi to exchange technical equipment. According to U.S. officials who spoke on...

Turkey launched a "zero problems with neighbors" policy in 2002. The first step was to waive visas with neighbors. Since diplomatic efforts have been launched, the number of countries offering visa-free travel to Turkish citizens has risen to 61. Twelve of these visa-free travel arrangements took place under the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government's new policy. These countries are Russia, Ukraine, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Pakistan, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Georgia, Qatar and Tanzania. Thanks to the advantages that come with the new visa-free regimes, Turkey has been able to increase the trade volume with its neighbors by...

Interview of the Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney in Palm Beach, Fla., conducted by Tasha Kheiriddin on Feb 1, 2011. ---- Q: By 1984, the year you were elected, the relationship between Canada and the United States had become frosty, to put it politely. How did you set about to change that? The first time I met Ronald Reagan was in June 1984, when I was leader of the opposition. I met him for 45 minutes in the Oval Office, and he was very impressive. He had a very good command of the Canadian files that I raised, everything from acid...

Please be informed by reading the following on his broken contract with Americans: Just as report cards keep parents posted on their children's progress in school, constituents have a tool to let them know how their federal representatives measure up to their oaths to uphold the Constitution. We should expect high "grades" from them, because it is not difficult to determine whether legislation oversteps the clearly delineated, limited powers of the Constitution. If there is uncertainty, the Bill of Rights tells the government everything else is off limits. Moreover, an oath calls God as witness to the oath-taker's honesty and...

It is amazing that, with unemployment unacceptably high, the Obama administration has endorsed a plan that will cost U.S. jobs and make highway driving for Americans more dangerous and less pleasant. Barack Obama wants to admit Mexican trucks to drive on all U.S. highways and roads. Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, explained what this means: "U.S. truckers would be forced to forfeit their own economic opportunities, while companies and drivers from Mexico, free from equivalent regulatory burdens, take over their traffic lanes." We wonder if Mexico has any regulatory standards at all. Mexican trucks...

For those legislating and regulating industry out of the country and reducing our living standard back to maybe 1800 to call themselves Progressives requires a sense of humor, but in a way, they're right. Closing Post-Classical civilization to move into a new era can be called progress, at least by some. Most in the newborn Western Christian era during its early Dark Ages might not have seen it as progress but we at the intended end of its flowering of wealth and technology certainly think of it that way. History leaves no doubt that civilizations rise and fall; the fall...

Watch this in light of the Mexican Trucking story.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration on Thursday proposed a new inspection and monitoring regime to permit long-haul trucks from Mexico on U.S. highways after years of delays over safety concerns and political wrangling. The Transportation Department's compromise seeks to revive efforts to fulfill a key provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which is highly unpopular with labor but supported by many businesses as a cost advantage. [ For complete coverage of politics and policy, go to Yahoo! Politics ] U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood called the plan by his agency a starting point to renew negotiations...

The country's largest manufacturer of sleeping bags says new competition from Bangladesh could force it out of business if the U.S. does not level the playing field. Exxel Outdoors Inc., which employs nearly 70 workers in its Alabama factory and makes about 2 million sleeping bags per year, has been pressing the Obama administration to lift an exemption that lets Bangladesh import sleeping bags into the country without paying a 9 percent tariff. "You can't leave an American manufacturer at a competitive disadvantage with a foreign worker," Harry Kazazian, chief executive of the company, told FoxNews.com. But that's apparently what...

In a further indication that the "North American Union" agenda is quietly proceeding under what remains of the Security and Prosperity Partnership initiative in the Obama administration, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano signed, with little fanfare, an agreement in Mexico that would extend special "trusted traveler" access to the U.S. to an estimated 84 million Mexicans. "In Mexico City, Secretary Napolitano and Mexican Ministry of the Interior Secretary José Francisco Blake Mora signed an agreement expressing their intent to develop a Global Entry international trusted traveler pilot program between the United States and Mexico – leveraging the success of the United...

For several years, Mexico has been solving their own unemployment problem by sending their jobless citizens to the United States. The result has been a low, steady rate of unemployment in Mexico since 2000. Of course, the unimpeded flow of cheap labor headed north, has had a disastrous effect on U.S. workers. Consider the following facts: -Between 1991-1999, Mexico had an average unemployment rate of 3.7 percent. Now, as economies around the world are falling apart and experiencing record joblessness, Mexico still has a relatively low unemployment rate of 5.5 percent (July 2010). -While the U.S. currently has an anemic...

Washington state officials say the second Amtrak Cascades train service to Vancouver is being cancelled due to higher fees imposed by Canada. The Canadian federal government said it would require the Washington State Department of Transportation to pay nearly $550,000 a year for border-clearance services. “British Columbia and Washington are so disappointed by this news,” said Washington transportation secretary Paula Hammond. She said the second train brought an estimated $11.8 million in economic benefits to B.C. and that it doesn’t make sense to end it over $550,000. Travellers to Washington state don’t pay a U.S. customs fee.

Caterpillar Inc. is telling its American employees in Mexico, particularly those with children, to return to the United States because of escalating violence there, the company said Thursday. About 40 American employees of Caterpillar facilities in Mexico, including in Monterrey, are affected by the company's order. Those employees all are salaried or management, said company spokesman Jim Dugan. "We have been and will continue to monitor and assess the security situation in Mexico and communicate with our employees in order to improve their safety. Based on recent guidance from the (U.S.) State Department, Caterpillar has informed expat employees in some...

A trucking dispute between Mexico and the U.S. has led Mexico to expand a list of tariffs to 54 American agriculture products worth an estimated $1.7 billion. The tariffs on American exports come after Congress discontinued the U.S.-Mexico Cross-Border Trucking Demonstration Project, a pilot program which allowed up to 100 firms from both countries to transport international cargo across the border without restriction. In evaluations of the fiscal year 2009 budget, Congress determined there was not adequate funding for the Department of Transportation (DOT) to continue the Demonstration Project. Under current U.S. law, Mexican transportation vehicles only may enter the...

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Mexico said Monday it will increase tariffs on a total of 99 U.S. products to pressure Washington to lift a ban on Mexican cargo trucks entering the United States. Last year, Mexico added tariffs to 89 products after the U.S. canceled a pilot program that allowed some Mexican trucks to transport goods into the United State. The Economy Department said the latest step will affect about $2.5 billion worth of trade involving agricultural and industrial products from 43 U.S. states. It said the list of products would be released later this week. The department said the...

MEXICO CITY—Mexico plans to add additional goods to a list of U.S. imports that face retaliatory tariffs in a long-standing dispute over access of Mexican trucks to the U.S. highways, Economy Minister Bruno Ferrari said Monday. At a news conference, Mr. Ferrari said Mexico will add 26 products to the original list of 89 and remove 16, bringing the total from 43 states to 99 goods with an estimated annual value of $2.5 billion to $2.6 billion. Mexico imposed the tariffs in 2009 after the U.S. Congress removed funding for an 18-month-old pilot project to allow Mexican trucks into the...

Sets deadline of October 1, 2010 for Administration to act(Washington, D.C.) –U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) included language in the Fiscal Year 2011 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) Appropriations bill that calls on the Administration to put forward a plan that would end retaliatory tariffs on Washington state agricultural products by October 1, 2010. The bill passed the THUD subcommittee, which Murray chairs, as well as the full Appropriations committee, and will now head to the full Senate for consideration. “I am extremely frustrated that the Administration has not yet acted while farmers across my home state of Washington...

Leaked documents reveal draft text of secret global copyright deal ) OTTAWA — As negotiators from 37 countries prepare to meet in New Zealand on Monday to discuss a top-secret trade agreement, a draft text of the document has found its way onto the Internet. While bits and pieces of the agreement, called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), have been leaked in the past, this is the first time a full draft is available to the public. The agreement, negotiated privately for the better part of two years, aims to create a global organization to oversee worldwide copyright and intellectual...

The "American Heritage Invention and Technology" magazine has an article on interstate highway bridge construction. The article was prompted by the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis a few years ago. The legal weight limit for semi-trucks was quoted as 80,000 pounds. This weight limit is what interstate highway construction in America is designed to carry. The article also mentioned that Nevada has found one in 14 trucks exceed the 80,000-pound legal limit. It was not clear from the article if the legal limit of 80,000 pounds is a federal limit and applies anywhere in the United States or...

MEXICO CITY (Hollywood Reporter) - Mexico has launched a $20-million tax-incentive program in an ambitious move to lure film production from Hollywood and other locales. Mexican President Felipe Calderon said Tuesday he hopes the program will make Mexico "the capital of Latin American cinema." He made the announcement at Baja Studios in the state of Baja California, where James Cameron's "Titanic" and Peter Weir's "Master and Commander: Far Side of the World" were shot in the studio's colossal tanks. Managed by state-run film financing agency Imcine and Mexican trade and investment body ProMexico, the program offers tax rebates of 7.5%...

The vehicle, which rear-ended a pickup truck south of Phoenix, was operating illegally from Mexico, authorities say. Sixteen people are injured. Reporting from Denver - A bus operating illegally from Mexico and traveling through Texas and Arizona to Los Angeles slammed into the back of a pickup truck and rolled over early Friday morning in the Arizona desert, killing six passengers and injuring 16, authorities said. "No one walked away unscathed," Arizona Department of Public Safety spokesman Robert Bailey said from the crash scene, about 30 miles south of Phoenix. The bus company, Tierra Santa Inc. -- which has offices...

The bill spearheaded by Rep. Gene Taylor, a Mississippi Democrat, would require President Barack Obama to give Mexico and Canada six months notice that the United States will no longer be part of the 16-year-old trade pact. "At a time when 10 to 12 percent of the American people are unemployed, I think Congress has an obligation to put people back to work," Taylor said. He argued NAFTA has cost the United States millions of manufacturing jobs and hurt national security by encouraging companies to move production to Mexico. The high unemployment rate makes it the "perfect" time to push...

TORONTO (AP) - The world's largest newsprint maker AbitibiBowater said Thursday that it is seeking more than 500 million Canadian dollars ($468 million) in compensation from the government of Newfoundland and Labrador in what it calls one of the largest free-trade challenges in Canadian history. AbitibiBowater, filing under the North American Free Trade Agreement, said it wants to settle what it claims is the province's illegal expropriation of the company's assets. In December, lawmakers in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador passed a law to expropriate the assets of AbitibiBowater, a Delaware-based newsprint maker that operates a large mill and...

Imagine tons of explosives being stolen in Mexico and then transported by truck into the United States. Could it happen? Over the weekend, it did. Almost.

COLUMBUS, Ind. (WISH) - Engine-maker Cummins was the site of a federal announcement from the Department of Energy on Monday. The Columbus-based company is receiving nearly $54 million to develop more fuel efficient passenger cars and heavy duty vehicles. "The American automobile and truck industry has been a backbone of American industry and we need to continue to have it as a major foundation in America,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu. “Revitalizing this industry requires change and requires innovation and Cummins represents the best of all that." The money comes from the $787 billion stimulus package. Indiana is...

The country of the United States isn't the country it was just some 30 years ago. Then we were a country willing to give our lives for any threat which may take our Constitutional freedoms away. Today the U.S. resembles those countries which threatened us in the fact that our Federal Government has stepped in and taken control of most of the private sector of business and finance and is poised for control of the medical industry as well.

DALLAS — Canada’s trade minister said Monday that some progress is being made on a nagging trade issue with the United States, while U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said a tangled dispute with Mexico over cross-border trucking and California Christmas trees might resolve itself next year. Welcoming Cabinet-level Mexican and Canadian trade officials to the city where he served as mayor, Kirk said language that removed funding for the Mexican truck program has been restored in next year’s budget bill. "We won’t be handcuffed by prohibitory language," he said. When the border was closed to 500 U.S.-certified trucks in a...

LANDMARK CASE BEGINS IN CANADA FOREIGN LAWS CREATE CLIMATE OF FEAR IN U.S. PUBLISHING AND BROADCASTING BIZ By Tracy Hood, No Compromise Media thelastcrusade.org American investigative journalist, and author, Dr. Paul L. Williams, will begin his crusade, October 8, in a Toronto courtroom to answer charges of defamation regarding his explosive investigations into missing radio active material at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Williams become entangled in a legal jam with the Canadian university while discussing his book The Dunces of Doomsday on the nationally syndicated “Coast-to-Coast AM” radio program with George Noory. According to Williams, “What is unique...