17 months of impact due to the closure of the border between Mexico and the United States
Goods transit
Jorge Molina Larondo, public policy advisor and professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey, highlights the importance of cross-border mobility, as it is estimated that 75% of national exports to the world’s most powerful country are made by land.
To speed up the transit of goods between Mexico and the United States, there are security certification programs such as C-TPAT (Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism) and the Organization of American States (the Authorized Economic Operator) also detailed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) negotiator by Mexico in the 1990s.
He added that there are currently 438 Mexican long-distance road transport companies before CBP.
Eugenio Salinas, head of Concamine’s foreign trade commission, said the border closures did not cause delays in the transit of goods, who also highlighted the joint agricultural food export inspection program that has reduced costs, losses, confiscations and rejections of goods. This kind of product comes from Mexico.
Affected countries
The US-Mexico border was the world’s busiest even before the coronavirus pandemic, according to a document published by Miranda Partners.
Molina Larondo said the restrictions on entering the United States are about the movement of people, not goods. The ban does not apply to cross-border trade, citizens and legal permanent residents of the United States, as well as to people traveling for medical purposes or to go to school.
“Wherever the impact of this border closure is for non-essential pedestrian and vehicular traffic, it affects the local economies of self-service and administrative stores; restaurants, gas stations, etc.,” explained Eugenio Salinas, Chairman of the Concamine Foreign Trade Commission.
“Border cities have also lost money in sales taxes because there are no sales, and the lack of income for cities affects the services they can provide in cities,” said Iracema Coronado, director of the School of Transnational Studies at Arizona State University. (ASU) in the document released by Miranda Partners.
In the case of Nogales, Arizona, in 2019, between 65% and 70% of sales taxes were from Mexican buyers; Also in Douglas, Arizona, 80% of taxes are generated through sales to Mexican visitors.
This decline in collection is reflected in fiscal problems and lower public spending, as well as the need to rely on federal resources so that the budget for essential services is not cut. Something Calexico, California, is already experiencing.
The picture in Laredo, Texas, is no different, Eugenio Salinas de Concamine said, with 60 to 70 percent of downtown businesses closed.
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