The Mexican government said it will change long-range plans to construct a trade railway connection from Texas to New Mexico due to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's stepped-up border inspections, The Dallas Morning Star reported on Sunday.
"We're now not going to use Texas," Mexican Economy Minister Tatiana Clouthier said. "We can't leave all the eggs in one basket and be hostages to someone who wants to use trade as a political tool."
Clouthier was referring to Abbott's order last month requiring all commercial trucks arriving from Mexico to Texas go through "enhanced" safety inspections in order to crack down on human and drug smugglers, which Mexican and U.S. officials and business leaders said created chaos at the border.
Critics have charged that Abbot's move was motivated by politics, pointing out that commercial trucks are already checked by U.S. federal authorities.
Clouthier's statement came even as Abbott ordered an end to the inspections, with a Waco, Texas-based researcher Perryman Group estimating that Texas suffered some $4 billion in economic damage due to the enhanced inspections.
In many ways, Abbott's policy only boosted New Mexico's Santa Teresa port of entry, where it generally takes less than 20 minutes to enter the U.S., compared to two hours or more at El Paso, some 20 miles away.
Due to anticipated further problems from Texas, Clouthier said the planned rail and ports expansion worth billions of dollars (known as the T-MEC Corridor) that would connect the Pacific port of Mazatlán to the Canadian city of Winnipeg would not use Texas, but instead the rail line would be routed along the far edge of West Texas up through Santa Teresa.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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