For the cartels' use of legitimate businesses and trucking firms to move their drugs is now established fact. Whatever the results of any investigation, Congress ought to demand that the President put an immediate hold on plans to throw open the U.S. southwest, and then the entire nation, to Mexican trucks. This is the next scheduled step in the proposed merger of the U.S. and Mexican economies. If the American heartland is opened up to these trucks, we can forget about the interdiction of Mexican drugs. And there is a safety factor.
Mexican trucks run twice the size of U.S. trucks and average three times the age.
U.S. border inspections, in the rare cases they are done, disqualify half of these trucks for American roads. Their brakes are often faulty, their tires unsafe, and their emissions standards abysmal. Their drivers lack the training and experience of U.S. drivers. By replacing American trucks and drivers with Mexicans, U.S. big trucking firms could haul freight more cheaply. So, too, of course, would the drug cartels, which would find the U.S. border even less of an impediment than it is today.