Lord William

Goodbye America, Hello North American Union.

In a month, August 20 and 21, the leaders of the United States, Canada, and Mexico will sit down together in Montebello, Quebec to discuss making the borders between these three nations disappear. They will discuss progress on a vast highway project passing through America to link Mexico with Canada. FreeMarketNews.com, July 16, 2007.

Lord William

For more information visit the ''North American Union'' thread at the Latin Bar, Foro Latinoamericano.

Link...........
North American Union

Lord William

Southern border blurs for global trade.

The Texas segment of the NAFTA Super Corridor is moving rapidly toward approval. When built, the Trans-Texas Corridor, or TTC, will be a major super-highway with six lanes moving in each direction, twelve lanes across in total, described in the 4,000 page draft environmental study as including separate lanes "for passenger vehicles and large trucks, freight railways, high-speed commuter railways, and a corridor for utilities including water lines, oil and natural gas pipelines, and transmission lines for electricity, broadband and other telecommunications services."

The TTC is expected to follow the current lines of Interstate 35, stretching from Laredo, Texas, on the Mexican border, heading toward Oklahoma City on the Texas border with Oklahoma.

An artist's rendition shows what the projected super-corridor highway is expected to look like.

The idea is to extend the rebuilt I-35 NAFTA super-corridor highway all the way from Laredo, Texas, to Canada, with extensions in Canada to be built out to Montreal in the east and Vancouver in the west. In Mexico, the super-corridor will connect via Mexican railroads with the port at Lazaro Cardenas.

A core design feature is to create a hub in Kansas City. Here the "Lazaro Cardenas – Kansas City Transportation Corridor" will open up a north-south route through the United States to bring in containers from the Far East. As described by Kansas City's Smart Port website:

The Lazaro Cardenas – Kansas City Corridor refers to a trade route linking Kansas City to key Asia-Pacific Markets via a ships-to-rail terminal at the port of Lazaro Cardenas in the State of Michoacan, Mexico. Thanks to an innovative series of international agreements, infrastructure improvements and new technologies, this corridor is a reality.
As the American economy expands and the economies of the Far East ramp up production to meet our demand for goods, the pace of international trade will exceed the ability of major West Coast ports such as Long Beach and Los Angeles to accommodate the flow of goods into the United States.

The NAFTA Super Corridor will be constructed largely by private companies that intend to operate the new I-35 as a toll road. North America's SuperCorridor Coalition Inc., or NASCO, is a "nonprofit organization dedicated to developing the world's first international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system along the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor" Already, NASCO has received $2.5 million in earmarks from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The NAFTA Super Corridor plan is ultimately to reduce the transportation costs of using cheap labor in China, South Korea and Indonesia to produce goods for American markets. Bypassing West Coast ports in the U.S. means bypassing U.S. union wages. Mexican port and rail transport are expected to keep the shipping costs low. Also, allowing free access to the U.S. to Mexican trucks means that the containers can be moved through the U.S. by Mexican nationals, again bypassing Teamster union wages and benefits typically paid U.S. truck drivers.


To get a feel for how transportation planners are influenced by globalist economic thinking, consider this 2005 analysis written by Leonard Krouner in the Voice of San Diego:

The Los Angeles/Long Beach and Seattle/Tacoma harbors are the only two West Coast ports between Alaska and Chile that can be used by super-cargo "post-Panamax" ships with a 4,000 standardized cargo container capacity. The ability to off-load, move, unload, store and distribute cargo from these ships requires expansion of California's transportation infrastructure. Delays increasing costs for cargo movement at the Los Angeles/Long Beach port such as those extant during the 2003 longshoreman labor unrest, and the 2004 arrival of too many ships in a single time period with cargo for distribution prior to the Christmas holidays are motivating mega importers Wal-Mart and Home Depot to invest in warehouse facilities in less expensive states such as Georgia.

None of this would be possible without the extensive work being done by the U.S. Department of Commerce working groups charged with implementing by new regulations the Strategic and Prosperity Partnership of North America, or SPP. The SPP agreement was reached between President Bush, President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin during their March 2005 summit meeting in Waco, Texas. The Bush administration plan is to create a North American Union along the model of the European Union, put in place by administrative regulations and departmental working groups under the SPP umbrella.

The U.S. Department of Transportation is actively working on a Free and Secure Trade program that would create special lanes to allow trucks from Mexico to cross the U.S. border with minimal electronic inspection, reducing the U.S. border with Mexico to no more than a speed-bump for authorized Mexican trucks entering the country.

On June 7, 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Department of Transportation v. Public Citizen ruled in favor of the Bush administration's argument that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration lacked the authority to exercise environmental controls to prevent Mexican trucks from openly operating in the U.S. under NAFTA. This ruling was key in the Bush administration's determination to open U.S. borders to Mexican trucks under the trade agreement. Had the Supreme Court decided otherwise, the NAFTA Super Corridor project would have suffered a setback.

I continue to argue that a "follow the money" strategy must be utilized to understand why President Bush has refused to close our border with Mexico, pushing instead for "comprehensive immigration reform" legislation that would allow the vast majority of illegal immigrants now in the U.S. to remain under a "guest worker" or "pathway to citizenship" provision. The underlying agenda of the Bush administration seems to be to create a NAFTA-plus environment in which workers, trade and capital will be allowed to flow unimpeded within the trilateral North American community consisting of the United States, Canada and Mexico.
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Site - The North American Union Forum.
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The Super Northern Highway (NAFTA).

Lord William

About NASCO

NASCO is a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing economic development activity while supporting multi-modal infrastructure improvements, technology / security innovations and environmental initiatives along the NASCO Corridor, and to stimulate the dialogue between the public and private sectors about critical, corridor-wide trade and transportation challenges.

NASCO members include cities, counties, states, provinces and private sector representatives along the Corridor in Canada, the United States and Mexico, dedicated to maximizing the efficiency and security of their existing trade and transportation infrastructure. The NASCO Corridor represents the existing trade and transportation infrastructure roughly shadowing U.S. Interstate Highways 35, 29 and 94, and the connecting transportation infrastructure in Canada and Mexico critical to national and international trade. This includes major intermodal "inland ports" along the corridor and under development.

From the largest border crossing in North America (The Ambassador Bridge in Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Canada) and Manitoba, Canada, to the second largest border crossing of Laredo, Texas and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and South to the Mexican Ports of Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas, the impressive, tri-national NASCO membership truly reflects the international scope of the Corridor and the regions it impacts.

Our goal is to distinguish ourselves from other corridors by taking leadership to deploy far-reaching, aggressive action & solutions along the entire NASCO Corridor, focusing on broader corridor issues, to include cross-border trade facilitation requirements and issues of national and international importance. We strive to be the lead on solving the industry adoption hurdles to new processes, procedures, technologies and systems.

As such, we have developed a network of contacts with public and private sector individuals, organizations, companies and public entities, institutes and centers of knowledge, as well as with regulatory and governmental entities from the local, state, provincial and Federal governments of Mexico, the United States and Canada.

Through interaction and exchanging of information and problems, concerns, experiences and relationships, NASCO and its members are able to drive projects forward that the private sector and public sector players find difficult to achieve on their own. NASCO has a highly credible, 13-year track record of successful advances in policies, projects and accomplishments.

Please visit our website at www.nascocorridor.com
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SuperCorridor & NAFTA Highway Defined

SuperCorridor - not "Super-sized". As defined in Webster's dictionary, "Super" means "more inclusive than a specialized category". NASCO uses the term "SuperCorridor" to demonstrate we are more than just a highway coalition. NASCO works to develop key relationships along the EXISTING corridors we represent to maximize economic development opportunities along the NASCO Corridor, as well as coordinate the development of technology integration projects, inland ports, environmental initiatives, university research, and the sharing of "best practices". NASCO is particularly focused on coordinating the efforts of local, state and federal agencies and the private sector to integrate and secure a multimodal transportation system along the existing "NASCO Corridor."

"NAFTA Superhighway" - As of late, there has been much media attention given to the "new, proposed NAFTA Superhighway". NASCO and the cities, counties, states and provinces along our existing Interstate Highways 35/29/94 (the NASCO Corridor) have been referring to I-35 as the 'NAFTA Superhighway' for many years, as I-35 already carries a substantial amount of international trade with Mexico, the United States and Canada. There are no plans to build a new NAFTA Superhighway - it exists today as I-35.

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General NASCO Statistics

NASCO Corridor drives the North American economy
International trade drives 25% of the country’s economy
Total commerce between the 3 NASCO nations already nears $1 trillion a year
By 2020, total domestic freight tonnage will increase 67%
Three of North America’s Top 20 NAFTA land ports can be found along the NASCO Corridor: Detroit (1st), Laredo(2nd) & Pembina, N.D.(11th)
The Port of Laredo has seen a 17 year increase of 621% in cross border loaded trucks and a 363% increase in cross border loaded rail cars.
Traffic in North America has increased up to 37% in the past decade, yet only 1% in new capacity has been added
The 11 NASCO Corridor states have identified at least $6.3 billion in needed construction and maintenance
16% of interstate miles are in poor condition; 21% of bridges are obsolete
65% of I-35 will require major upgrades and maintenance in the next 20 years
$80 billion is lost in congestion costs, nearly quadruple the impact of congestion in 1982
For every $1 invested in the NASCO Corridor, $5.70 is returned in economic benefits
Every $1 billion in highway investment generates 47,500 jobs
Transportation accounts for up to 14% of the price of products we buy
Since 1999, the Federal Government has directed more than $234 million in project funding towards the NASCO Corridor

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