NAFTA The North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect in 1994, shortly after being signed by President Clinton in 1993. The goal of NAFTA between the three countries of Canada, the United States and Mexico was to eliminate restrictions such as the Mexican tariffs on the flow of goods, services and investments in North America. Within a decade of signing NAFTA, the United States has experienced a global increase in trade deficit, and loss of jobs in all 50 states. Many manufacturing corporations have closed their plants and moved to Mexico. They opened factories, called Maquiladoras across the Mexican border. In the last ten years, due to the increasing NAFTA shipments coming from China, the demands on the Los Angeles ports have exceeded their capability.Many ships are left waiting outside the port, and some have been turned away in search of other port locations such as Mexican ports.There is a plan on the NASCO (North America's Super Corridor Coalition) website indicating the mission of building an "international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system" from Lazaro Cardenas through Kansas City and up to Winnipeg, Canada. This will allow Mexican trucks to haul goods along a 12-lane superhighway through the heartland of the United States (1).In 2035, trucks are projected to carry 2.2 billion tons of international freight, valued at approximately $6.2 trillion. As for shipments moved by rail, the projection for 2035 is 397 million tons, and the estimated value is $275 billion (2).Today the NAFTA truck route I-35 (north-south axis from Mexico straight to Canada) is a cause of concern for the environment and highway safety. The I-35 infrastructure is not adequate for the extra truck traffic.The results are collapsed bridges, accidents, and bottlenecks in cities along the way. Evidence of increasing international trade truck traffic on I-35 through Minnesota raises concerns that NAFTA superhighway traffic contributed to the recent collapse of the freeway bridge in Minneapolis. WND The World Net Daily has unearthed a Federal Highway Administration report dating back to 1998 that warned increasing NAFTA truck traffic was expected to create a safety concern for bridges inthe United States along the I-35 NAFTA superhighway (3).