LIVE UP TO NAFTA U.S. PROTECTIONISTS UNDERMINE MEXICAN TRADE.

Byline: Gary Galles

FOR a while, it appeared that free trade won in one of the most hotly disputed cases ever brought under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

A special arbitration panel, including two Americans, unanimously ruled that the United States, which in NAFTA agreed to stop denying Mexican trucks access to American highways by 1995, must honor that commitment, and the Bush administration announced its intention to do so Jan. 1.

However, rather than live up to our own market-opening commitment, opponents are sabotaging it, hiding their protectionist agenda behind the smoke screen of supposed concerns about Mexican truck safety.

But safety is not the real issue.

The biggest safety charge against Mexican trucks is that 36 percent of those inspected in 2000 were idled for safety reasons, implying an obvious danger to Americans. Unmentioned is that 24 percent of U.S. trucks inspected last year also were idled for safety reasons.

If safety were the true concern, rather than just an excuse to exclude Mexican trucks, there would be a huge furor over unsafe U.S. trucks, whether or not Mexican trucks are allowed in. But there is not.

Instead, there have been proposals to lower the age limits for Americans to be licensed to drive big rigs, which would raise the highway risks imposed by domestic trucks.

The real issue then is not whether Mexican trucks should be let in, but one of inadequate safety enforcement in our trucking industry now, including far too few safety inspectors.

Unlike so many ways the government expands in areas it has no competence in, here is a way the government could usefully employ more resources to advance the general welfare. But it has not, showing that suddenly discovered safety concerns over Mexican trucks are bogus.

Not only do Mexican truck opponents fail to address this real safety enforcement issue, but some even twist it their advantage. They say that more enforcement resources are indeed necessary, but therefore we cannot safely let in Mexican trucks until those resources become available.

At the same time, they try to prevent those resources from being spent on safety enforcement, especially if the enforcement would also be directed at U.S. trucks, turning this claim into a permanent excuse to keep out Mexican trucks.

Last month, the House went even further, voting to prohibit even processing any Mexican truck company applications. If safety rather than restricting competition from Mexican trucks were the real issue, those applications would be processed, and only unsafe trucks would be kept out of the country.

In addition, before the NAFTA ruling, the same groups now claiming safety as their rationale were arguing for a total Mexican truck ban, regardless of safety standards. Afterward, they favored keeping those trucks out and instead paying Mexico damages to compensate for resulting losses, which Mexico put at $2 billion a year.

Neither position is consistent with safety's being the real issue.

Those pushing to pay Mexico compensation of up to $2 billion a year to keep ``unsafe'' Mexican trucks out most clearly reveal the hypocrisy of those safety concerns. You could hire plenty of truck inspectors for far less money and get far more safety, including increased U.S. truck fleet safety, for the price.

And putting the money into paying inspectors, instead of excluding Mexican trucks, would also save U.S. consumers from paying the substantial extra transportation costs the current system imposes on shipments to and from Mexico, where each trailer must be handled by three different tractors in its border dance, and open Mexico up to U.S. trucking firms, as well. They are now excluded in retaliation for our ban on Mexican trucks.

Opponents have even threatened to demonize Mexican trucks by widely publicizing every Mexican truck-caused death in the United States to put a face on the issue.

But if safety and public support for safety were the issue, they would now be publicizing more than 5,000 deaths annually from U.S. truck-related accidents.

Free trade creates wealth. That is why we favor opening others' markets: It benefits both their consumers and more efficient American producers.

But free trade is beneficial for Americans just as it is for others. That also applies to free trade in shipping the goods we trade with others, which is why excluding Mexican trucks is very costly to U.S. citizens and will get more so after the recent NAFTA ruling.

And given that truck inspectors are just as capable of detecting unsafe Mexican trucks as unsafe American trucks, it does little, if anything, to improve truck safety in the United States.

Such a high-cost, low-benefit approach may appeal to those whose protected jobs are threatened and those who refuse to understand why free trade benefits all parties involved, but it is not good public policy.