I love Ron Paul. I agree with him on nearly all major issues and think that his race for the Presidency of the United States is the most important political movement this nation has seen at least since Barry Goldwater ran for the White House.

That said, I think he is taking the wrong track -- at least from an economic perspective -- in opposing the ability of Mexican truckers to work in the United States. His argument seems to boil down to the fact that US truckers are too heavily regulated to compete with Mexican truckers and that we should do away with onerous regulations first. Of course, regulations should be reasonable, but the only way politicians and industries can be deregulated is to force them to compete and thus to lobby for more reasonable regulations. Until then, the regulated will simply dictate how they are governed.

Of course, I understand that politically-speaking, free trade is relatively unpopular right now (and Dr. Paul has always been skeptical of trade agreements), so it makes sense to emphasize that point.

I discuss here in greater detail some of the reasons for allowing the Mexican trucker program to move forward.