The compact, scheduled to expire with the fiscal year on Sept. 30, is strongly opposed by lawmakers from the Midwest, who view it as a cartel intended to keep milk from their states' dairies out of New England.
A federal prosecutor in California told me recently about a case in which a group of American ecstasy producers entered negotiations with a Mexican cartel to manufacture large volumes of the drug, but ended up abandoning the deal when they realized that the cartel intended to keep them around just long enough to learn their recipe, then kill them.
The Saudi oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, told Middle East Economic Survey that Opec, the producers' cartel, did not intend to cut output "whatever the price is".
A Presidential election in Mexico in July restored the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or P.R.I., to power, and the incoming President Enrique Peña Nieto has signalled (if vaguely) that he intends to demilitarize his predecessor's campaign against the major trafficking cartels.
Speaking in Belarus, and having probably eyed OPEC's internal strife, Novak said he intends to push for a "1.5 million bpd of oil production increase" with the cartel this year.
Mr. Yogarajah said that BHP has consistently indicated that it intends to withdraw from the sales and marketing side of Canpotex, which acts as a cartel, but that it is interested in using the group's transportation systems.
The deaths, many of them gruesome mutilations intended by the cartels to attract notice, come from dealers enforcing discipline within their ranks, from bitter turf battles among rival cartels and from clashes between criminals and the authorities.
The clumsy program that ran from late 2009 until early 2011 was intended to weaken Mexican cartels.
The program was intended to identify Mexican drug cartel leaders and smuggling routes across the border by allowing illegal purchases of firearms and tracking the weapons.
