NAFTA Next summit: a promising day in the neighborhood

— by Pat Foran, editor

On April 23, I attended "NAFTA Next: Energizing Stable Trade Corridors Across North America," held April 22-25 at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago — thanks, Coalition for America's Gateways and Trade Corridors (CAGTC), for the invite. Regrettably, I was there only that one day, beginning with the release of "20 Years After NAFTA," a study conducted by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. In short: The pact has helped harmonize climate-change policies and efficient trilateral energy production supply chains, researchers concluded. It's also contributed to U.S.-Canada surface trade doubling and U.S.-Mexico trade quadrupling since NAFTA was signed in 1994.

CAGTC Founding Chair Mort Downey and former U.S. Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater noted the day's speakers would examine the pact's promises kept (notably, the trade boost) and the ones unfulfilled (there hasn't been enough infrastructure and process modernization, nations aren't working together to prepare for the new energy world, there's no freight policy). It would help if NAFTA nurturers changed they way they talked about trade agreements, said Canadian Ambassador to the United States Gary Doer in a morning keynote.

"We need to turn it from an economic debate to people's backyards," he said. "Talk about North American 'neighbors,' not GDP."

In his afternoon keynote, BNSF Railway Co. Executive Chairman Matt Rose talked a bit about how his railroad and his railroad's neighbors to the north and south have become more neighborly these past 20 years. "When I joined BNSF in 1993, a number of ports were up for sale, and few saw value in them," he said. "Intermodalism was just beginning to be mentioned. The two Canadian railroads did some cross-border [traffic] and three Mexican railroads didn't do a lot."

Now, they do. BNSF hit a "high-water mark" of 200,000 units in Mexico in 2012 and moved almost as many in 2013, and handled about 350,000 units in Canada last year, he said. Meanwhile, the railroad continues to invest — in infrastructure, facilities and process improvements — to meet future demand, including $1 billion this year in its Northern Corridor.

"We still believe the best is yet to come," Rose said.

Witness crude by rail. Regardless of what happens with the Keystone XL Pipeline, CBR will be "the largest game-changer" of all NAFTA commodities, Rose predicted. "We see the promise of NAFTA being fulfilled."

Even so, borders and barriers still exist, NAFTA Nexters reiterated. The focus of NAFTA "next" should be on making trade as seamless as possible — or, at least, making it "less hard," Rose said, although the prospects of that happening in the current political clime are murky at best. As Rose put it: "NAFTA was hard [to pass] then — I think it would be impossible today."