Hope in NAFTA's record trade.

Seaboard's sage, Jose Perez-Jones, has been asked a number of times lately to quantify the benefits of the Central America Free Trade Agreement to the parties involved. He says he knows there is a benefit but the numbers are hard to parse along with other economic growth and development in the region.

But there is a lot of hope as the North American Free Trade Agreement matures. A surge in imports carried by truck in March added $1 billion to total trade using surface transportation between the U.S. and its NAFTA partners Canada and Mexico with a remarkably balanced exchange of imports and exports.

Overall surface trade amounted to $69.8 billion, the highest …