Revving up

EVERY day along the world’s busiest border, an expensive and time-consuming pantomime is acted out. Goods coming from Mexico are painstakingly unloaded from Mexican lorries so that they can complete their journey in identical lorries driven by Americans. The North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA), introduced in 1994, promised each country’s lorry-drivers the right to roam freely in the other’s border states by 1995 and nationwide by 2000. But American unions, fearing that their members would be undercut, persuaded Congress to forbid Mexican hauliers from venturing more than a few miles beyond the frontier—even though 70% of the two countries’ $400 billion a year in trade is delivered by lorry.

Within the next few weeks, however, Mexican lorries should be rumbling north at last, following a deal signed by the two countries on July 6th that ends America’s 16-year violation of the treaty. The Mexican government reckons the agreement will cut Mexican exporters’ shipping costs by 15%. Firms on both sides of the border “can do business and know that the rules of the game will be respected,” says Beatriz Leycegui, Mexico’s undersecretary of trade.