The Teamsters have been complaining and organizing against a Bush administration move to let Mexican trucks into the US (their campaign site is here). Basically, the Bush administration cherry picked a small number of safe Mexican trucks and is letting them in under a pilot program to assess whether cross-border trucking is safe. When there are very few safety problems, Bush will open the border to all the unsafe Mexican trucks, even though that's probably against the law.
The plan to let Mexican trucks operate throughout the United States has prompted a war of words and legal papers between the Bush administration and Jim Hoffa, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Hoffa and his allies at the Sierra Club and Public Citizen have sued in federal court to stop the government from issuing permits to Mexican freight haulers. Their lawyers argued in court that Mexican trucks pose a danger on the roads and threaten increased human and drug smuggling.
It's a travesty, as are many things in this administration. The goal is to reduce the leverage of unionized truckers and increase the power of big business at the expense of consumers, drivers, and workers. Shocker I know. Now, I'm not sure, but I bet if someone polled this fight it'd be one of those 80/20 gut level angry issues that cuts across partisan lines. Chris Hayes has done a fascinating story about the NAFTA superhighway, a completely mythical monstrous road designed to cut through the American heartland and bring America into a North American Union government. I'm not kidding. It's a huge issue for the super-patriotic right, and you can tell this is the case by the politicians stepping up on it.
Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Boyda of Kansas, Republican Walter B. Jones of North Carolina, and Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio are all deeply connected to the populist streak that is anti-NAFTA, and they are all outspoken on this one. I think it's a winner, just like the Dubai ports deal. Unlike the Dubai deal, though, this narrative is very pro-union. I would pick this fight, Senator Schumer.
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