North American Union's Joint US/Mex Facility Progress Stalled

The murky diplomatic status of a proposed Mexican customs clearinghouse in Kansas City has gotten murkier.

Since last spring, local officials and the Washington office of Sen. Kit Bond all have insisted that the matter was moving through government channels.

But U.S. State Department spokesman Eric Watnik said that the agency has never been formally asked to consider the proposal.

“It’s off the radar screen,” said Bill Anthony, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection in the Department of Homeland Security. Border Protection was engaged in the early planning and was widely thought to have endorsed the project and moved it along.

“It never got to the point of submitting the paperwork to the State Department,” Anthony said. “It’s not a matter of wanting to or not wanting to. It’s not on anybody’s front burner.

“It might be the Mexican government isn’t pushing. I don’t know,” he said. “It was a hot issue about a year and half ago, but we haven’t been pushed for anything. Somebody’s got to be pushing it.”

Local officials close to the project expressed surprise that the process has stalled.

“I find that amazing,” said Kansas City Councilman George D. Blackwood Jr., a director of the city’s nonprofit Mexico Business Development Corp. and president of the North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition Inc., which fosters trade and transportation ties with Mexico and Canada.

“If this is true, I can’t imagine it,” Blackwood said.

At one time, Kansas City SmartPort Inc., a nonprofit coalition of shippers, warehouse operators and others, had hoped by mid-2006 to have the facility built and leased to Mexican authorities on city-owned land near Kemper Arena.

The State Department’s Circular 175 review and approval process determines whether such an arrangement with another nation must proceed under a formal treaty requiring congressional approval, or as a less formal trade agreement.

SmartPort President Chris Gutierrez, who has been the driving force behind the three-year effort, said the last word from Bond’s office to SmartPort and other local interests was that the project was undergoing C-175 scrutiny.

Bond spokeswoman Shana Marchio would say only: “The project is working its way through the process.

“Senator Bond has monitored the progress of the SmartPort project and facilitated talks with the appropriate federal agencies, including Customs and Border Protection and the Department of State. … While there has been some delay due to the new government in Mexico, Senator Bond hopes to see continued progress.”

Under the proposed agreement, Mexico-bound American and Canadian truck freight would be inspected by U.S. and Mexican border authorities in Kansas City and then sealed for movement directly to Mexican destinations, with fewer costly delays at border choke points like Laredo, Texas.

Mexican shippers and deep-water port operators in Manzanillo, Lazaro Cardenas and other Pacific ports would then complete the trade link to Asia and other destinations.

The proposal still faces other hurdles.

•SmartPort has been unable to obtain a clear lease to the 5-acre West Bottoms site because the city is bound by its long-term lease of that land to the American Royal.

Gutierrez said SmartPort remains hopeful. “We’re not looking at alternative sites,” he said.

•The federal government in Mexico changed hands in December, and Gutierrez said new players involved in the Kansas City project may not be up to speed.

Gutierrez said he’s seen no lessening of interest on Mexico’s part.

•Diplomatic talks could be sticking over an emerging Mexican priority. At an international trade conference in Kansas City last December, Hector Marquez Solis, Mexico’s NAFTA minister in Washington, said his nation would push for a counterpart U.S. customs clearing operation on Mexican soil that would similarly hasten the flow of Mexican goods across the border to U.S. and Canadian markets.

Until that point, the Kansas City project had been seen as a one-way deal for goods headed to Mexico. But Marquez said “it has to be two-way” to ease border delays on both sides.

“Kansas City is an alternative only if trucks can go directly to their destinations and not stop at the border,” he said at the time.