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In the midst of record-breaking inflation, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott is being accused of imposing policy measures that are deliberately driving up prices ahead of the mid term election.
New reports and videos from the Texas-Mexico border show a bottleneck of semi-trucks filled with consumer goods after Abbott imposed inspections for each and every load crossing into the US. The policy, experts say, is causing delays in supply chain, food waste, and making inflation worse for Texans and truck drivers who keep the economy running.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke took his TikTok followers to the Columbia International Port of Entry in Laredo, Texas to show the lines of trucks first hand.
"These trucks behind me have been sitting on this international bridge for four, five, six hours, because Greg Abbott is literally trying to shut down the international border," O'Rourke says in the clip posted Wednesday (April 13).
"This is food, these are consumer electronics, these are auto parts, these are the inputs to the manufacturing that we do in America that we depend on more than six million jobs across the country, 600,000 in Texas," he added.
According to multiple Texas news outlets the governor's policy now requires every single truck to pass through an enhanced inspection before gaining entry, when it only used to be a selection of trucks.
Not only are food growers who ship perishable items losing money and experiencing food waste, truck drivers are also losing income because of the lengthy inspections that last anywhere between 45 minutes to an hour each, meaning they can only bring a limited amount of loads per day.
Abbott said the policy was to crack down on cartel activity, but some, like O'Rourke, say the move was to intentionally impact inflation across the US –– which would ultimately hurt Democrats in the upcoming midterm election, where several key races could flip power of at least one chamber back into the hands of Republicans.
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