Mexico Economy Minister Tatiana Clouthier announced that a long-planned railroad line linking the Mexican port city of Mazatlán to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, would no longer go through Texas and instead be rerouted through New Mexico. The railroad line was expected to bring billions of dollars in revenue to Texas.
“We’re now not going to use Texas,” Clouthier said at a conference on April 28 in Mexico City. “We can’t leave all the eggs in one basket and be hostages to someone who wants to use trade as a political tool.”
The economy minister’s comment was made in reference to Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s controversial border policy, which instructed state police to conduct additional border inspections of all trucks entering the United States from Mexico.
Abbott implemented the rule in response to the Biden administration’s plan to repeal the Title 42 policy, which allowed for migrants to be turned away at the border in response to the COVID-19 virus. Abbott’s policy was intended to reduce human trafficking and unlawful migrants coming across the border hidden in trucks.
The governor rescinded the mandate after protests from truckers, business leaders, and disagreements from fellow Republicans, including Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, who called it a “catastrophic policy.”
James K. Robinson, president of JH Rose Logistics, which supplies trucks for international trade in the region, said the plan made sense in theory but caused issues in application.
“I don’t disagree with what Abbott did. I mean, he had to do something to try and protect us on the border, but he also created a far more serious problem than I think he envisioned,” said Robinson. “It just made a mess for the supply chain, so to speak.”
An Axios report estimated that Abbott’s border inspection policy cost the U.S. nearly $9 billion in lost GDP in just 10 days, with roughly half of that number impacting the State of Texas alone.
According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the additional security measures caused hours of delay for truckers and contributed to some perishable foods spoiling in the trucks, weakening an already battered supply chain.
The proposed railway, known as the T-Mec Corridor, will now pass through the New Mexican city of Santa Teresa, 20 miles west of downtown El Paso.
The crossing at Santa Teresa became a popular route for Mexican truckers entering the United States attempting to avoid the additional inspections ordered at Texas crossings.
Santa Teresa’s Border Industrial Association President Jerry Pacheco says the route has remained busier than usual even after Abbott rescinded the additional inspection policy.
“It’s been very interesting, but since Governor Abbott’s truck inspections went away, our traffic numbers remain higher than normal in terms of northbound cargo shipments, which leads me to believe that what I thought would be a temporary fix is actually going to stick in the long term,” Pacheco said, adding Ciudad Juárez and El Paso business leaders now call the crossing a “‘very effective delivery route.'”
Pacheco expressed his enthusiasm for the plan of the T-Mec Corridor going through Saint Teresa, calling it “a very positive step for New Mexico,” but cautioned that the project will take years to finalize and “anything can happen in that time.”
“I don’t think they’ve even gotten to finish a design yet,” Pacheco said. “So this is very much in the preliminary stages, but the very fact that we’re being discussed in the early stages is a positive thing. If this particular project doesn’t work out, there’ll be other projects that the Mexican government will have and they’ll speak favorably of New Mexico because they know we want to work with them in a constructive way.”
Construction of the T-MEC corridor is expected to take approximately five years. It requires just over 50 miles of additional tracks to be constructed, combined with over 4,400 miles of existing track.