The US government says it is placing a 17 per cent duty on most fresh Mexican tomatoes after negotiations ended without an agreement to avert the tariff.
The US Commerce Department announced it was withdrawing from a 2019 deal suspending an anti-dumping duty investigation on tomatoes from Mexico.
Anti-dumping duties are calculated to measure the percentage by which Mexican tomatoes have been sold in the United States at “unfair prices,” the Commerce Department said in its statement.
President Donald Trump on Saturday had separately threatened to impose a 30 per cent tariff on imports from Mexico starting on August 1, after weeks of negotiations with the major US trading partner failed to reach a comprehensive trade deal.
Mexico’s agriculture ministry and economy ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mexico said in April it was confident that it can renew the tomato agreement with the United States. Washington had said in April that it intended to withdraw from the deal.
The agreement, which regulates Mexican tomato exports to the US in a bid to allow US producers to compete fairly, was first struck in 1996 and last renewed in 2019 to avert an anti-dumping investigation and end a tariff dispute.
US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that “for far too long our farmers have been crushed by unfair trade practices that undercut pricing on produce like tomatoes.”
Tim Richards, a professor at the Morrison School of Agribusiness at Arizona State University, said US retail prices for tomatoes will likely rise around 8.5 per cent.
Jacob Jensen, a trade policy analyst at the American Action Forum, a right-leaning policy institute, said areas with a higher reliance on Mexican tomatoes could see price increases close to 10 per cent, since it will be more difficult to replace that supply.
According to official figures, Mexico exported $US3.3 billion ($A5 billion) of tomatoes last year, the vast majority to the US.
with AP
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