Jose Luis Gonzalez Reuters One of the busiest commercial ports on the U.S.-Mexico border remained virtually closed on Wednesday as frustration and traffic jams escalated as new orders from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott required additional commercial trucking inspections under the trucking company. Republican border. As of Monday, Mexican truckers have been blocking the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge in protest since Abbott last week ordered state troops to stop and inspect trucks coming to Texas. Unusually large backups – some lasting 12 hours or more – have piled up elsewhere along the Texas border for about 1,200 miles. Less than a week after the inspections, the Mexican government said Abbott’s mandate was causing “serious damage” to trade and that cross-border traffic had plummeted to one-third of normal levels. On Wednesday, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki called Abbott’s order “unnecessary and unnecessary.” The stalemate is the result of an initiative that Abbott says is necessary to curb human trafficking and the flow of drugs. But critics are questioning how inspections are achieving that goal, with business owners and experts complaining about financial losses and warning that U.S. grocery shoppers could spot shortages immediately this week. Disappointment also extends to members of Abbott’s own party: Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, a Republican, called the inspections a “catastrophic policy” that has forced some trucks to travel hundreds of miles to Arizona. “I’m describing it as a crisis, because that’s not the normal way of doing business,” said Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez, whose county includes the Far Light Bridge. “You’re talking about billions of dollars. When you stop this process, I mean there are many, many, many, many people affected.” The shutdowns and slowdowns have sparked some of the biggest backlash to date in Abbott’s multibillion-dollar cross-border operation, which the two-year-old governor has become the cornerstone of his government. Texas already has thousands of state soldiers and members of the National Guard at the border and has turned prisons into prisons for immigrants arrested on charges of state trespass. Abbott warned last week that inspections would “dramatically slow down” border traffic, but has not dealt with backups or port shutdowns since. His office did not respond to a request for comment by Tuesday, but the governor scheduled a press conference for Wednesday afternoon in Laredo. Holidays in some of the world’s busiest international trade ports could pose an economic and political threat to Abbott, which is seeking a third term in November. Democrat Beto O’Rourke, the former presidential candidate who is running against Abbott for governor, said during a standoff in the Far East on Tuesday that inspections were doing nothing to stem the flow of immigrants and exacerbate its problems. supply chain. With him was Joe Arevalo, owner of Keystone Cold, a cold storage facility on the border. He said that although the Texas state military always inspected some trucks crossing the border, they “never, ever kept a complete system or a complete supply chain.” Mexican truck drivers block Pharr – Reynosa International Bridge connecting Reynosa to McAllen, Texas, to protest Texas truck inspections imposed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in Reynosa, Mexico on April 11. Stringer | Reuters An estimated 3,000 trucks cross the Pharr Bridge on a normal day, according to the National Freight Chamber. The Pharr Bridge is the largest land port for products such as green leafy vegetables entering the US Mexico supplies about two-thirds of the products sold in Texas. “We are living a nightmare and we are already suffering from a very sensitive supply chain from the pandemic and we are trying to renew the business,” Arevalo said. The additional inspections are being carried out by the Texas Department of Public Safety, which said Monday had inspected more than 3,400 commercial vehicles and put more than 800 “out of order” for offenses involving defective brakes, tires and lighting. He made no mention of whether the truck searches had identified migrants or drugs. The impact of the order spread rapidly across Texas: U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials confirmed Tuesday that there was another blockade of Mexican customs at the port of Santa Teresa in southern New Mexico, not far from El Paso. . These protests are misguided, as New Mexico has nothing to do with Texas’s inspection policies, said Jerry Pacheco, executive director of the International Business Accelerator and president of the Border Industrial Association. He said the protests cost businesses millions of dollars a day. “Everyone down here is in an inventory system just in time,” Pancheo said. “It will affect us all, all of us in the United States. Your car parts will be delivered late, your computer – if you ordered a Dell or HP tablet, it will be discontinued.” Ed Anderson, a professor at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, compared the holidays to those caused by a trucking ban in Canada in February that forced car factories on both sides of the border to shut down or cut production. . During this protest, trucks looking for other entrances to cross into the US ended up causing congestion on other bridges, a scenario Anderson said could now be repeated at the southern border. Anderson said consumers are likely to start seeing the effects by the end of this week, if not earlier. “Either prices will go up or the shelves will be low,” he said.
