WASHINGTON — The U.S. Commerce Department said on Monday it will impose duties of 17.09% on fresh tomatoes from top supplier Mexico, after withdrawing from a 2019 deal suspending an antidumping duty investigation.
The U.S. and Mexico first struck an agreement in 1996 to regulate Mexican tomato exports and allow U.S. producers to compete fairly. The agreement was last renewed six years ago to avert an antidumping investigation and end a tariff dispute on the trade, which is worth more than $3 billion a year, according to official figures.
Mexico said in April it was confident that it could renew the tomato agreement after Washington said it intended to withdraw from the deal.
Antidumping 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.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on Monday that “for far too long our farmers have been crushed by unfair trade practices that undercut pricing on produce like tomatoes.”
Mexico’s agriculture ministry and economy ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A group of five Mexican agriculture associations, including from Baja California and Sinaloa states, said they were committed to working with the Mexican government to find solutions.
Of the 6.5 billion pounds of fresh tomatoes consumed in the United States, about 4.3 billion are supplied by Mexico, the associations said.
“In the short or medium term, there are no countries in the world that can replace Mexican tomatoes in a market we have built through innovation and effort over the past 120 years,” they said in a statement.
In the build-up to Monday’s expected announcement, some experts, as well as Trump’s opponents from the Democratic Party, had warned that prices of products will rise as a result of the duties.
“Salsa will be pricier, shelves emptier, and groceries more expensive,” U.S. Representative Sylvia Garcia said on X on Friday.
President Donald Trump on Saturday had separately threatened to impose a 30% tariff on imports from Mexico starting on August 1, after weeks of negotiations with the major U.S. trading partner failed to reach a comprehensive trade deal.
U.S. growers have long sought protections from Mexican competitors who can often grow the fruits year round.
The 2019 agreement was supposed to set a floor on pricing and provided for U.S. border inspections of crops but U.S. growers have long argued that the arrangement had too many loopholes that allowed for dumping of Mexican fruits.