NOGALES, Ariz. (KGUN) — Tomatoes from Mexico could cost you more soon, but it’s not from President Trump’s push for more tariffs. It’s from a dispute that goes back to the late 1990s.
Produce houses in and around Nogales stay very busy bringing food from Mexico for your table. Now there’s a tariff that goes way back before all the current tariff discussions that could make your tomatoes cost a lot more.
In Rio Rico, at Garrett’s IGA grocery, Lourdes Garrett and her family depend on tomatoes from Mexico to keep customers satisfied and keep the registers ringing.
“If they go up 20% it's going to hurt the business, and it's going to hurt our customers pockets, and they may not buy it as often as they do now.”
It’s not a new tariff that could make tomatoes cost more. It’s a disagreement that reaches back maybe 30 years. Florida tomato growers have been complaining since then that Mexican tomato growers are setting prices lower than fair market prices and trying to get around price limits in trade agreements.
Robert Guenther of Florida Tomato Exchange says, “Price manipulation, trying to go around the floor price by selling in secondary and third markets and other areas that we have seen in violations based on our research and data that we have and Department of Commerce has confirmed.”
The US Commerce Department set tariffs on Mexican tomatoes designed to even out price differences between tomatoes from Mexico and tomatoes from Florida. But the Commerce Department suspended those tariffs for several years if Mexican growers lived up to price restrictions.
Now Commerce says suspending the tariffs didn’t solve the problem so the tariffs could be back on in about three months.
Diego Ley of Del Campo distributors says if the tariffs go back to the roughly 20 percent they were before Commerce suspended them, small importers could quit the tomato business.
“And if fewer tomato importers are distributing tomatoes. You know, they can have more power to establish prices, so that can also pressure for prices to grow to increase.”
He says Mexican tomatoes sell well because they offer more variety, higher quality and says they can command higher prices than tomatoes from Florida.