With mounting pressure from union leaders, President Obama agreed last year to shut down the US boarder to Mexican long-haul truckers.  The Mexican government responded in kind by re-initiating high tariffs on American exports entering that country.  A recent Huffington Post piece discusses how the trade dispute affected and continues to affect American farmers, manufacturers and other producers.

Mexico’s President, Felipe Calderone is scheduled to visit the White House in a few days and, as Gary Shapiro from Huffington suggests, the visit presents a unique opportunity for the two leaders to put the dispute behind them and in doing so take us one step closer to Obama’s recent pledge to double exports in the next five years.  The article also suggests that re-opening the boarders to bi-lateral trade could also spur the creation of or help save 25,000 American jobs related to the exchange of goods between the two countries.

Mexico is the United States’ third largest trading partner, not to mention our immediate neighbor to the south.  Such protectionist policies, as the Post article points out, are counterintuitive and backward.  In addition, they are surely out of step with the President’s overall economic agenda as he has presented it abroad, to congress and to the American people.  In order to be taken seriously by not only Mexico, but by other countries as well, and improve the chances of economic growth based on a burgeoning export sector, needless prohibitions such as these should be recognized for what they are – outdated and hurtful to America’s long term economic goals.