Is the U.S. building a NAFTA super highway?

May 29, 2007

By Matt Stearns, MCCLATCHY NEWS SERVICE (WASHINGTON)

If the government really has a secret plan to build a 12-lane road-and-rail NAFTA Superhighway that will split the heartland from Mexico to Canada, it's playing with a great poker face. "There is absolutely no U.S. government plan for a NAFTA Superhighway of any sort," said David Bohigian, an assistant secretary of commerce. Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., a powerful member of committees that would authorize and pay for a NAFTA Superhighway, if one were being planned, dismissed the notion as "unfounded theories" with "no credence."

And yet: A pending congressional resolution condemns it. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, speaks darkly of "secret funding" for it. Nativist commentators fulminate against the four-football-field-wide behemoth as a threat to private property, national security and "a major lifeline of the plan to merge the United States into a North American Community," as conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly wrote.

Responding to denials, Rep Virgil Goode, R-Va., the chief sponsor of the House of Representatives resolution opposing the NAFTA Superhighway, scoffed: "I've heard that line before. They're just calling it something else. ... It's a decrease in our security and an erasing of our borders."

Goode is hardly alone: His resolution has attracted 21 co-sponsors, from both parties.

The authorities say that the whole idea, inspired by the free-trade agreement signed by the U.S., Mexico and Canada, is an Internet-based urban myth fueled by fear and suspicion. Those accused of selling out U.S. sovereignty by shilling for a superhighway say that legitimate efforts to increase trade efficiencies through international cooperation, technological enhancements and infrastructure improvements have been turned into something sinister.

For example, conspiracy theorists see Kansas City, Mo., as a pivotal point for the superhighway because of Kansas City SmartPort, an effort to turn the region into a transportation and logistics center. Officials are working with Mexico to establish an inland customs facility -- for exports of U.S.-made goods only, not, as some fear, as a security-reducing inland port for imports from Mexico and Asia, said Chris Gutierrez, president of SmartPort.

Here's what Paul, a GOP presidential candidate, told a New Hampshire audience: "They already have a plan for a highway running from Mexico up to Canada, a 12-lane highway with trains running in the middle. It's going to be an international highway. And there's been some secret funding already into our budgets to start this program moving. There's going to be eminent domain powers used to confiscate tens of thousands of acres to build this."

Others see it as a first step in an effort to erase national borders and sovereignty and unite all of North America into a single union, with one currency.

Those convinced that the NAFTA Superhighway is coming point to several disparate efforts they say prove that the government isn't telling the whole truth:

• The controversial effort to build the "Trans-Texas Corridor," which would largely parallel existing highways, primarily moving freight. The suspicious see it as the NAFTA Superhighway's first leg.

• A Bush administration proposal to allow some Mexican trucks to drive deeper into the U.S. heartland than previously allowed. A bill to limit the program passed the House 411-3.

• North America's SuperCorridor Project, or NASCO. The Texas-based nonprofit coalition advocates for improvements along major trade corridors, such as Interstates 35, 29 and 94.

• The Security and Prosperity Partnership, or SPP. It's a collaborative effort on several fronts, including trade and security, by the United States, Canada and Mexico. Critics call it ground zero for the push for a North American Union.

U.S. trade with Mexico has increased from $79 billion in 1993, when NAFTA was approved, to $332 billion in 2006, so it only makes sense to ensure that the existing system can handle the load, said Frank Conde, a NASCO spokesman.

Nancy Boyda, a Kansas congresswoman who campaigned against the NAFTA Superhighway, said, "This is an issue about trade, jobs and security. When they want to build something like this in Texas, why do people say, 'It's just a myth'? I'd suggest they take a closer look. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then maybe it's a duck."