ROMO MAY BE RELEASED SOON
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LCC
Border Patrol agents support youth programs
Growth foreseen in shale
Agents take pride in volunteering
Industry learns to recover from oil, gas decline By Julia Wallace
S P ECIAL T O T HE T I ME S
THE ZAPATA TIME S
On February 10, 2017, Border Patrol agents assigned to the Zapata Border Patrol Station spent some time helping the youth in Zapata, Texas. Border Patrol agents assisted Zapata High School students with a program called The Coffee Time Coffee Shop. This program is geared towards having special needs students interact and learn from other students at the local school coffee shop. The proceeds from their sales are
During the recent slump in the oil and gas industry, companies drilling in the Eagle Ford Shale learned how to do more with fewer rigs. This efficiency will carry into the industry’s current recovery period, according to several oil and gas business leaders. LCC on Tuesday hosted the Eagle Ford Consortium’s regional quarterly update. The consortium represents the 20 counties that make up the Eagle Ford Shale, and fosters the relationships between oil and gas companies and the communities where they work. In a panel discussion regarding projected trends for the area, industry leaders all said they foresee growth in the Eagle Ford Shale, but nothing like the boom that occurred 10 years ago. Michael Garcia, the director of HR for Lewis Energy, said his company has 60 new job openings, which is already an uptick. But this will be a controlled, stable growth, he said. “We will not see the numbers we saw five years ago,” Garcia said.
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Courtesy photos
Pictured above and bottom left, Border Patrol agents spend time with Girl Scouts. Pictured bottom right, agents assisted Zapata High School students with a program called The Coffee Time Coffee Shop.
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NAFTA
Mexico threatens to ‘walk away’ if tariffs are added By Nacha Cattan and Eric Martin B L OOMBE RG NEWS
Mexico’s top trade negotiator doubled down on threats to break off talks to rework Nafta, saying his country will walk away if the U.S. insists on slapping duties or quotas on any products from south of the border. “The moment that they say, ‘We’re going to put a 20 percent tariff on cars,’ I get up from the table,” Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said in an interview. “Bye-bye.” This doesn’t mean, Guajardo emphasized, that Mexico would be looking to scrap Nafta. But by saying it refuses to even discuss the kind of tariffs President Donald Trump has long trumpeted, the country is ratcheting up the pressure on U.S. negotiators and effectively daring them to pull out of the 23-year-old pact. Trump has lambasted the accord — which also includes Canada — as unfair and responsible for a “massive” imbalance favoring Mexico. It last year shipped $294 billion worth of goods north while the
U.S. sent $231 billion south. Mexican officials have said they expect official talks to start in June. And if they fail? “It wouldn’t be an absolute crisis,” said Guajardo, who headed the Nafta office of the Mexican embassy in the U.S. in the early 90s, when the pact was being written and implemented. Without Nafta, trade between Mexico and the U.S. would be ruled by World Trade Organization strictures limiting tariffs either country can impose on the other, with the average for Mexico at around 3 percent, according to the Mexico City-based political-risk advisory firm Empra. That “would take away some of our margin of competitiveness,” the minister said, but would be manageable. One thing that could help mitigate the impact of Nafta’s end is the tumble in the peso. It’s plunged 8 percent against the dollar over the past year, extending its slump since early 2013 to 35 percent. Tariff talk As things stand now, most products go back and forth duty free; automobiles, televi-
sions sets and some other goods have to contain a certain amount of content sourced in North America to get full Nafta benefits. But there’s been a lot of talk in Washington about taxing imports. White House spokesman Sean Spicer in January floated the idea of a 20 percent levy on goods from Mexico to pay for a border wall. That trial balloon went up after Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto canceled a trip to the American capital in response to Trump’s repeating a campaign pledge about charging Mexico for the cost of building the wall. Some Republicans in Congress have called for what they refer to as a border-adjustment tax, affecting all countries, to help finance cuts in the corporate income tax. During the campaign, Trump was a fan of a 35 percent tax on auto imports from Mexico. Guajardo said part of the reason his country is unwilling to consider any new Nafta duties is because of a possible domino effect. “Opening the door to tariffs is very dangerous, because it’s like opening Pandora’s box -- the lines of Mexico continues on A11
Courtesy photos
Zapata County Fair Queen Clarissa Yvette Garcia, pictured above, was crowned Zapata County Fair Queen on Sunday. The first-runner up, pictured below, was Triana Isabel Gonzalez.