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Supreme Court Votes in Favor of Trade, Disregarding Environmental Impacts

NAFTA strikes again - upholding trade and ignoring the environment

On Monday, June 7, the Supreme Court landed a decisive blow against the environment by opening the U.S. border to long haul trucks originating in Mexico.  The Court’s decision allows the Bush administration to ignore the environmental impact of Mexico-based long-haul trucks under the North American Fair Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Supreme Court Gives Green Light to Trucks, But Puts Air Quality in the Red

Under NAFTA, the U.S.-Mexico border was supposed to be fully open to Mexico-based trucking companies by 2000.   The Clinton Administration kept the border closed due to concerns about the safety of the trucks.    In 2000, a NAFTA tribunal ruled that while the trucks could not be totally excluded, U.S. safety and environmental laws applied to them while in the U.S.

When President Bush came into office in 2001, one of his first steps was to try to open the border to trucking.   Appalled at the lack of safeguards and information on safety, Congress stepped in during the summer of 2002 and ordered the Administration to monitor safety far more closely than was planned. 

When the government also did a shoddy job examining the air quality and health effects of the increased emissions and congestion from the trucks, Public Citizen joined with environmental and labor groups to sue the Administration in hopes of forcing them to take a closer look.  

The Ninth Circuit Court in California agreed with Public Citizen and ordered the Bush Administration to conduct a full environmental review before opening the border.   After the win, the Administration appealed to the Supreme Court.    

Monday’s ruling in favor of the Administration will cause more hazardous pollution in already-struggling border cities, both in the U.S. and in Mexico, where people are suffer from pollution levels that now violate federal standards.   It will allow corporate interests in both countries to profit without any regard for the rising child asthma rate and diminishing overall health of border communities. 

The Bigger Picture: Trade at the Cost of Health and Safety

For over a decade, Public Citizen has been fighting against corporate-managed trade policies, like NAFTA, that undermine the democratic process, encourage a “race-to-the-bottom” in labor and environmental standards and grant unprecedented rights to corporations. With the support of our members, Public Citizen works to support    policies that uphold hard-fought consumer, labor and public health protections.

U.S. workers have seen the damage NAFTA and other trade policies have wrought, as employers scour the globe for the cheapest labor.    Now U.S. truck drivers, who on average earn about double their counterparts in Mexico, fear employers have the green light to replace them.

Just consider the damage that NAFTA has caused in the ten years since it took effect.

The members of Congress who pushed for passage of NAFTA -- many of whom now admit that they didn’t even read the agreement -- promised Americans that the measure would create hundreds of thousands of new high-wage U.S. jobs, raise living standards, improve environmental conditions and transform Mexico into a booming new market for U.S. exports. 

But Public Citizen predicted that NAFTA would destroy hundreds of thousands of good American jobs, decrease wages here and in Mexico, undermine democratic control of domestic policy-making, and threaten our nation’s health, environmental and food safety standards.  And we were right.

And although the evidence shows that the NAFTA model has failed, the Bush Administration and others in Congress want to expand NAFTA to include Central America (CAFTA) and ultimately the entire hemisphere in the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

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