Former GOP New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's infamous "Time for some traffic problems" in Fort Lee email kicked off the Bridgegate scandal in 2014. Now 8 years later, GOP Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is doing the same thing with all truck traffic entering the country through the state from Mexico, in an effort to cause massive problems for Joe Biden and for America.
A new Texas policy to have state officials inspect every truck entering from Mexico has prompted a massive protest among drivers, backing up cargo for miles and leaving loads of fruit, vegetables and other material sitting idle for days.
Freight operators are panicking about the ramifications of the delays, as much of the United States’ produce this time of year is imported from Mexico. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) last week said the “enhanced safety inspections” of all commercial vehicles were necessary because he alleged federal officials were not stopping drugs and criminals from entering the United States. Now, trucking officials say, little is entering the country at all.
“This isn’t a regional issue, or that the city of Laredo is not getting their produce at grocery stores,” said John Esparza, president of the Texas Trucking Association. “We are seeing delays that will be felt across the country. There are a half a dozen divisions of trucking [affected]. There’s the refrigerated segment of trucking, there’s household goods, forestry, fuel tankers, commodities for trade goods — this is about General Motors, Ford and everything coming out of Mexico, our trade partner.”
Strawberries, asparagus, avocados, tomatoes and other spring favorites are sitting in lines of refrigerated trucks many miles long as growers and shippers scramble to reroute and grocers hustle to find products from elsewhere to avoid empty shelves.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday that Abbott’s “unnecessary and redundant” inspections of trucks at ports of entry between Texas and Mexico have disrupted food and automobile supply chains, delayed manufacturing, impacted jobs and further raised prices for American families. She said trucks are facing lengthy delays exceeding 5 hours at some border crossings and commercial traffic has dropped by as much as 60 percent.
“The continuous flow of legitimate trade and travel and Customs and Border Protection’s ability to do its job should not be obstructed,” Psaki said. “Governor Abbott’s actions are impacting people’s jobs and the livelihoods of hardworking American families.”
Abbott last week moved to impose the new border restrictions, alleging that the Biden administration had “open-border policies” that “paved the way for dangerous cartels and deadly drugs to pour into the United States.”
He said Texas “will immediately begin taking unprecedented action to do what no state has done in American history to secure our border,” which means each truck will be inspected by the Texas Department of Public Safety for human trafficking, weapons, drugs and other contraband.
The governor’s plan to have state officials scrutinize each truck means that up to 80 percent of perishable fruits and vegetables have been unable to cross since Friday, said Lance Jungmeyer, president of the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas.
This is causing losses of millions of dollars a day for employers and employees who have been idled, he said, with customers unable to load product from their Texas suppliers. It also means transportation shortages are increasing as available trucks are stuck waiting in line to cross the border, all of which will continue to drive up the price of produce at American grocery stores.
“These trucks are already inspected by Customs and Border Protection — scanned and X-rayed and drug-dog sniffed,” Jungmeyer said. “These new inspections are redundant. At numerous ports of entry, Laredo, Pharr, Eagle Pass and others, Mexican drivers are starting to protest.”
Abbott’s office did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.
The line for trucks to cross at the Pharr bridge has been reported at up to 7 or 8 miles long, said Rod Sbragia, vice chair of the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas and director of sales and marketing for Tricar Sales, a grower and shipper of Mexican produce. He said somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 trucks stand nose to tail waiting for entry. Refrigerated trucks, he said, have about six or seven days of fuel to run their refrigeration units. After that, spoilage is certain.
Which of course is the point. Abbott and the GOP are gleefully causing supply chain disruptions, empty shelves, and higher food costs for stores and restaurants, not to mention parts shipments for cars and trucks, clothing, and everything else. He's deliberately hurting truckers and shipping companies in an effort to drive them out of business, too.
Greg Abbott is going to try to seriously damage the economy, and then blame Biden for it. Given the flap over gas prices and inflation in general, Abbott's going to get away with it, too.
Republicans hate America so much that they are deliberately hurting millions of people in order to cause political harm to the Democrats, and they don't care how many suffer in their wake.
Case in point. Texas’ safety troopers have removed 646 trucks from service out of 2,685 inspected so far. But not because they found dangerous drugs or humans hidden in compartments or among the goods being hauled from Mexico.
Nope. The taxpayer-funded troopers instead are taking trucks out of service for violations that include “burned-out headlights or taillights, defective brakes or flawed tires,” according to The Wall Street Journal and other media reports.
Abbott, who’s made drug and immigration crackdowns top issues of his reelection campaign, has said that “cartels use vehicles, many of them dangerous commercial trucks, to smuggle immigrants, deadly fentanyl and other illegal cargo into Texas.”
That may be the case. But are Abbott and his people dumb enough to think the cartels would actually continue to use commercial trucks after he made a huge public circus out of his operation?
The governor and his people are, of course, mum now about the fact that their inspections have produced no drugs nor humans being smuggled into the country inside those trucks.
If these inspections were actually about completing Abbott's stated goal of "finding human trafficking or illegal drugs" then we'd be hearing it all over the news. Instead, Abbott is doing this all for show, with the added benefit of causing food shortages and inflation hikes on Mexican produce and food imported. Texans will be hurt first.
We'll see how long this keeps up.