The Trump administration announced Monday that it would impose a 17 percent tariff on most imports of tomatoes from Mexico, as it withdrew from a decades-old trade agreement that had prevented those levies from snapping into place.
The tariffs will add to the price of a year-round grocery store staple for many Americans, while funneling more business to domestic tomato growers, largely in Florida.
The levies stem from a nearly 30-year-old trade case that found Mexican tomato growers to be selling their products in the United States at unfairly low prices. The U.S. tomato industry brought a case against their Mexican competitors in 1996, arguing that Mexican tomatoes dumped into the United States were injuring American growers. A U.S. trade court agreed with them, and ordered tariffs to be imposed.
But on five occasions since then — in 1996, 2002, 2008, 2013 and 2019 — the United States agreed to suspend the tariffs, as long as Mexican growers would keep their prices above a certain minimum level. The United States and Mexico had been in recent talks about entering into a new agreement.
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