To move goods between the United States and Mexico, shippers typically dealt with three trucking firms. Goods were shipped to a storage facility in a border town. The trailer was then detached from the tractor and picked up by a drayage company that moved it across the border, where a truck in that country picked it up to haul it to its final destination. The process was inefficient, and the border delays were a trucker's nightmare.
This handing off of cargo was necessary because the United States prohibited Mexican trucks from carrying goods through to their U.S. destination for safety reasons. According to U.S. government studies, as many as 40 percent of the five million Mexican trucks that entered the United States in 1999 failed to meet U.S. safety requirements. Mexico does not have the same rigorous standards for driver regulation and truck inspections as does the United States, nor does it register or track safety statistics on its carriers. U.S. trucks must undergo periodic safety inspections by qualified personnel employed by the trucking company. Canadian regulations are similar to those in the United States, and Canadian drivers have been permitted on U.S. highways for decades. The United States maintained that because it can inspect less than 1 percent of the Mexican trucks arriving in the United States, it could not open its border to Mexican trucking companies until Mexico also adopted comprehensive regulatory standards as tough as those in the United States and Canada. Mexico acknowledged that when its trucks operated in the United States they must comply with U.S. standards, but that the United States could not dictate Mexican regulatory standards.
What were the panel's holdings with respect to the various restrictions on the free operation of the Mexican trucking industry in the United States?