Mexico, Domestic Producers and Importers Respond to Possible Return of AD on Mexican Tomatoes
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said last week that Mexico can impose duties on U.S imports of chicken and pork legs in response to the U.S. Commerce Department’s notice that it will be ending the 2019 suspension of Mexican tomato duties. Her government is conducting antidumping investigations on both meat products, she noted.
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Sheinbaum and Mexican Agriculture Minister Julio Berdegue have expressed confidence that the deal will be renewed.
"This process has happened many times and Mexico has always won," Sheinbaum said, according to a Reuters report.
The Commerce Department also released another notice April 18 on its decision to withdraw from the 2019 agreement suspending an antidumping duty investigation on Mexican tomatoes. The 2019 agreement’s terms require 90 days’ notice before a party can withdraw. As a result, Commerce’s withdrawal can’t officially occur until July 14. On that date, the department said in a release, it will set AD on most Mexican tomatoes at 20.91%.
And the Court of International Trade upheld April 18 Commerce's recalculated AD rates for its 2019 determination (see 2504170035) -- rates that will go into effect July 14 if the department goes through with terminating the suspension. The AD rates range from 2.81% to 273.43%, although the higher rates were calculated for exporters that didn't respond to the investigation because they no longer sell the product or have gone out of business since the investigation's 1996-97 period of review.
Florida tomato growers have led the charge to re-establish antidumping duties on the tomatoes. The Florida Tomato Exchange asked the department to withdraw from the agreement, Commerce said in its April 18 notice. It said it had been “flooded” with requests to do so from U.S. tomato growers.
The Florida Tomato Exchange called the decision a “major victory for American agriculture,” claiming that the successive suspensions have “failed American farmers.” It said in a release that imports have surged by more than 400% since the first agreement in 1996. U.S. growers’ share of the market has dropped from 80% to 30%, it said.
Supporters have also included congressional representatives such as Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Reps. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., and Mario Díaz-Balar, R-Fla. (see 2504150057). Scott's office said the senator has "consistently called for this termination for years" and had recently spoken to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick about it.
In a news release, the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas said that consumers’ prices will rise “significantly” if the 20.91% duties are implemented.
It claimed that the domestic producers who sought to end the agreement have been seeing their market shares drop because they “have failed to innovate.” They still grow “gas green tomatoes,” or tomatoes picked while green that undergo treatment to ripen, while “consumers and restaurants have shifted to tomato varieties that naturally ripen on the plant,” such as those grown by its members, it said.
Opponents to the move have described it as having a disparate impact on Texas and Arizona. In a letter to Lutnick, Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., opposed ending the suspension agreement, saying that "the tomato supply chain from Mexico supports 33,000 American jobs, including grocers, truckers, restaurant staff, warehouse operators, and others who move fresh tomatoes from the Nogales Port to American consumers."
Similarly, Texas-based NatureSweet, which grows and packages tomatoes, said two years ago, in response to the Florida Tomato Exchange’s 2023 petition, that, according to a study by Arizona State University professor Tim Richards, more than 54,000 jobs in Texas and Arizona could be impacted.
The Florida Tomato Exchange has disagreed that the issue is regional. It said in 2023 that it “has always received broad support on this issue from tomato growers across the country,” including from “growers in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.” It argued that it was only able to seek an antidumping investigation because it had majority support from the domestic tomato industry.