Trade between North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) partners must become more efficient if North America is to compete with rapid economic growth in countries like China and India, according to David Bradley, Canada Truck Alliance chief executive officer.
He made the comments at a Border Trade Alliance Conference February 14 in Washington DC.
"We must ensure that new US measures aimed at enhancing border security at our land borders don’t become a barrier to existing, integrated manufacturing processes, but allow for the efficient movement of goods between the world’s two largest trading partners,” he said.
He added that the Free & Secure Trade (FAST) program, which is supposed to facilitate the movement of low risk people and goods, needs value-added incentives and should be used as the platform for other programs also requiring driver security background checks.
Bradley also voiced concern that the burden of compliance is not being equally shared among all the players in the supply chain. He cited recent introduction of $5,000 to $10,000 fines for advance cargo information violations that appear to be falling exclusively on carriers when fault may lie with other trade chain partners.