By John Burgess
                  Washington Post Staff Writer
                  Sunday, March 26, 2000; Page H01

                  LAREDO, Tex.—From 8 in the morning to 10 at night, Mexican trucks
                  carrying the stock in trade of U.S.-Mexico commerce--auto parts, toys,
                  clothes and televisions--roll north across two bridges that span the Rio
                  Grande at this famous border town.

                  But once they pass through customs checks, most of the trucks travel just
                  a few miles. They go to giant cargo lots, unhitch their trailers for pickup by
                  American tractors and then head back south across the river. For most,
                  going more than eight miles from the city limits is strictly against the law.

                  That's because President Clinton says Mexican trucks aren't safe enough.
                  Eight years ago, the United States promised under the North American
                  Free Trade Agreement to let Mexican trucks that meet U.S. safety
                  standards travel anywhere in this country. Fulfilling that pledge is on
                  indefinite hold.

                  The Mexican government contends that Washington is setting a dangerous
                  precedent by arbitrarily suspending a key provision of the trade agreement.
                  After years of talks, it has taken the United States to court under
                  NAFTA's snail-paced dispute-resolution system; the United States has
                  filed a counterclaim. A five-member panel will hear the case.

                  Commerce Secretary William Daley says the United States wants a
                  solution. "That would be good for the economics on both sides," he said in
                  an interview. "But until there's a level of confidence on the safety issues,
                  we're just not going to do it."

                  One view is that the truck issue illustrates the difficulties of merging the
                  economies of two countries with vastly different levels of development.

                  Many people here and in Mexico believe that Daley's concern about safety
                  is a cover for politics--specifically a White House desire to please the
                  International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the labor union representing
                  American truck drivers, who express fears about safety and jobs.

                  In that view, Mexican trucks are a case study in the difficulty that
                  government leaders have in fending off special interests while implementing
                  controversial trade agreements, no matter how strong their free-trade
                  convictions may be.

                  By extending the ban, the logic goes, the White House is hoping to help
                  secure the labor vote for Al Gore's presidential campaign. "This is quite
                  consistent with the efforts of the campaign," said Peter Morici, senior
                  fellow at the Economic Strategy Institute. "It's not consistent with
                  NAFTA."

                  Moving into its fifth year with no end in sight, the ban has put the White
                  House at odds with some of its "new Democrat" allies, party members who
                  are straying away from traditional pro-labor votes.

                  "Mexico has made a good-faith effort to comply with its obligations under
                  NAFTA," said Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute,
                  a think tank associated with those legislators. "There is really not much in
                  the way of empirical evidence that there is a real problem here. . . . The
                  best course would be for the United States to comply with its obligations
                  under NAFTA and monitor the situation closely and see if safety problems
                  do materialize and act accordingly."

                  Lt. Mauricio Cantu of the Texas Department of Public Safety, whose
                  command includes the nine state troopers who watch the Laredo entry
                  points, says that the safety performance of Mexican vehicles is improving.
                  When his people first started spot safety checks at the border in the
                  1994-95, about 85 percent of the trucks were put out of service for critical
                  violations. Today, he said, the figure has dropped to 40 percent to 45
                  percent.

                  Mexican officials say even that figure is misleading. U.S. inspectors face a
                  deluge of vehicles--fewer than 1 percent get a real going-over--so they
                  often pull over only those vehicles that have visible defects. If all trucks
                  were inspected, the flunk rate would be much lower, the officials said.

                  Mexican bus companies that have separately obtained permission to
                  operate in the United States have managed a safety record comparable to
                  U.S. rates, Cantu said. He believes that with proper certification and
                  inspection, Mexican trucks entering the country could operate with
                  American-level records of safety.

                  "This is not a safety issue," Javier Mancera, minister for trade affairs at the
                  Mexican Embassy in Washington, says bluntly. "It is a political issue."

                  Daley dismisses suggestions of political motivation. "The difficulty on the
                  trucking issue has been around now for five years," he said. ". . . That was
                  five years before an Al Gore candidacy or anybody else's candidacy.
                  People want to say that anything that happens now is about Al Gore."

                  The United States signed NAFTA with Mexico and Canada in 1992 with
                  the goal of creating the world's largest free-trade zone. U.S.-Mexico trade
                  has mushroomed--two-way exchanges rose from $108 billion in 1995 to
                  nearly $200 billion last year, growth demonstrated by the near-perpetual
                  diesel fumes and traffic backups at the border crossings. At Laredo alone,
                  about 7,200 trucks cross from Mexico each day.

                  The collapse of the peso's value in 1995 crimped Mexico's ability to buy
                  American, but later the country overtook Japan as a market for U.S.
                  goods. At the same time, many thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs went
                  south of the border, feeding a deficit in trade.

                  Economic impact was often tumultuous, but on a political level the U.S.
                  and Mexican governments cooperated smoothly. Trucks have been a big
                  exception.

                  Under the deal, the United States agreed to open its highways to approved
                  Mexican trucks in stages: first in 20-mile "commercial zones" along the
                  border; then, in 1995, in the four border states; and then, this year, across
                  the country. Approved U.S. trucks would get reciprocal access to
                  Mexico's roads.

                  Economic theory held that the free flow of vehicles across the frontier
                  would raise industrial efficiency. Manufacturing companies with
                  cross-border interests welcomed it, hoping it would save time and money.
                  They cited the border's cumbersome and costly three-step transfer system:
                  long-haul trucks deliver trailers to yards at the border, short-haul "drayage"
                  tractors pull them across, other long-haul trucks pick up the trailers and
                  take them on to their destination.

                  This, economists felt, had no place in the era of "just-in-time"
                  manufacturing, which relies on tightly choreographed delivery of parts and
                  finished products.

                  Still, no one quite knew what effect the NAFTA trucking plan would have.
                  Would American drivers really venture in significant numbers into rural
                  Mexico, where roads can be narrow and police routinely arrest drivers
                  involved in fender-benders? Would Mexican truckers really drive to New
                  England? Would some kind of two-driver system evolve? An American
                  might take a truck south to the border and hand it over to a Mexican driver
                  for the rest of the trip.

                  The Mexican trucking industry largely resisted the opening, worrying about
                  competition from big and well-capitalized U.S. concerns. American
                  trucking companies fought for it, viewing it as a logical way to streamline
                  their international operations, speed deliveries and lower costs.

                  The 20-mile zone was opened on schedule, but liberalization ended there.

                  U.S. Chamber of Commerce chief Thomas Donohue, then head of the
                  American Trucking Associations, recalls being told by Clinton
                  administration officials late in 1995 that everything was set for four-state
                  operations to begin, with safety provisions in place. But days later all sorts
                  of questions were suddenly being raised. The day that Mexican companies
                  were to be allowed to apply for operating authority, Washington said no.
                  The Teamsters quickly put out statements praising the move.

                  Donohue sees the sudden change as being made for "purely partisan
                  political reasons to placate the Teamsters."

                  Mexico responded in kind, declaring U.S. trucks couldn't operate in its
                  territory either.

                  Today, the union keeps up the pressure, and Clinton has reiterated that the
                  border won't open soon. At a labor awards dinner in New York honoring
                  Teamsters President James P. Hoffa last October, the president declared:
                  "I don't intend to allow the trucking rules to be changed until there's safety
                  there that we can know about."

                  Teamsters argue that trucks from a Third World country such as Mexico
                  can't possibly meet the United States' safety standards consistently. Many
                  of the standards of regulation here simply don't exist across the
                  border--there is no national requirement to keep operational logs in
                  Mexico, for instance.

                  Opening the border, they contend, could mean a new conduit for drugs. It
                  could mean American motorists endangered by poorly trained,
                  sleep-deprived drivers in under-insured vehicles. Mexico isn't a
                  law-abiding country, they suggest, citing cases in which, despite the ban,
                  U.S. police have pulled over Mexican trucks as far afield as North
                  Dakota.

                  "That one doesn't even have a turn signal in the front," said a disapproving
                  Rick Glasebrook, president of Teamsters Local 657, as an aged Mexican
                  rig pulled out of a holding yard by the Laredo bridges earlier this month.
                  The right solution, he said: "Enforce high standards on both sides of the
                  border, not drag it down to where you reach the lowest common
                  denominator."

                  For all the talk of safety, the Teamsters are clearly looking out for one
                  another's jobs as well. Driving a visitor around Laredo, Glasebrook
                  complains that some Mexican drivers are illegally working on the U.S. side
                  of the border. They pull cargo across to trucking yards, then spend the day
                  on short-haul jobs in Texas before heading home. "Companies make
                  money, but the American driver loses out," he says.

                  In Laredo these days, you can see some of these trucks, sent to a lot
                  below the bridge by Department of Transportation inspectors or the Texas
                  state troopers who police the crossings. Mechanics come and work on
                  them in the sun; other trucks are removed to garages by tow trucks.

                  In any case, the trucks failing inspections are not the ones that would enter
                  under NAFTA. Today's drayage tractors, both U.S. and Mexican, are old
                  workhorses that never travel more than a few miles. Since the job consists
                  largely of idling in traffic backups at U.S. customs booths, companies
                  assign their oldest equipment to it.

                  Across the border in Nuevo Laredo, Mexican trucking executives say an
                  entirely different class of trucks would cross over if NAFTA is ever
                  honored: late-model, well-maintained vehicles being purchased by
                  Mexican firms. "They have new trucks--[built in] '95, '96, '99," said Mario
                  Ramon Serna Hernandez, general manager of Central de Carga, a
                  Mexican trucking concern.

                  And the border would not simply be thrown open to all comers: Any
                  company wanting to send its vehicles in would first have to convince U.S.
                  authorities that they were abiding by U.S. regulations. The U.S.
                  government could insist on regulating such things as tire quality and drivers'
                  maximum time behind the wheel, as it does in this country. "If they do not
                  comply with U.S. standards, they should not be let in," Mancera said.

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