Tomatoes Become One of the First Everyday Casualties of Trade War
New fees will hit fresh tomato imports from Mexico starting in July unless a new agreement is reached
April 18, 2025 The Wall Street Journal
WASHINGTON—President Trump dialed back his trade war—but not on tomatoes.
Starting in July, new fees will hit fresh tomatoes imported from Mexico after the Commerce Department decided this week to end an agreement that has largely been in place for the past three decades.
Agricultural economists said the Trump administration’s move is likely to increase prices for consumers, since roughly 70% of tomatoes sold in the U.S. are currently brought in from Mexico. Officials in Mexico said this week they hope to renegotiate the agreement before it goes into effect.
If a deal isn’t reached, tomatoes could be one of the first everyday products to become more expensive as a result of Trump’s trade policies. The exact price increase is unclear, economists said, but one estimated it could be roughly 10%. Tomato companies warn the increase could be significantly higher. A one-pint package of grape tomatoes earlier this month cost an average of $2.48, according to USDA data.
Some of those involved in the long-running dispute learned of the decision when they got a phone call this week from a Commerce Department official named Chris Abbott, a third-year Georgetown University Law student who graduates next month. Abbott, the deputy assistant secretary for policy and negotiations at the International Trade Administration, joined the first Trump administration even before graduating from college, working under Peter Navarro, the trade hawk who helped craft Trump’s far-reaching tariff plan.
“The current agreement has failed to protect U.S. tomato growers from unfairly priced Mexican imports,” the Commerce Department said. “This action will allow U.S. tomato growers to compete fairly in the marketplace.”
The tomato agreement, established in 1996, was meant to resolve a dispute over whether Mexico is selling tomatoes at artificially low prices into the U.S. market. It set a minimum price for imported Mexican fresh tomatoes and established quality inspections. But it can often still be cheaper to grow tomatoes in Mexico year-round because of its climate and lower costs.
Mexican Agriculture Secretary Julio Berdegué this week denied that the country’s producers sell tomatoes below cost in the U.S.
If the agreement ends in July, that minimum price vanishes, but companies will have to pay a fee of 20.9% on imported fresh tomatoes from Mexico, according to the Commerce Department, although industry officials said that figure could shift. That will make tomatoes from Mexico more expensive, benefiting growers in Florida, one of the few places in the U.S. that can grow tomatoes year-round.
In the longer term, U.S. tomato farmers might be able to grow more, but “production costs are a lot higher domestically than they are in Mexico,” said David Ortega, a professor of food economics and policy at Michigan State University. “In the short term, we don’t have the capacity to all of a sudden grow the amount of tomatoes we were importing from Mexico.”
The U.S. tomato market has changed over the past two decades, as new varieties of cherry and grape tomatoes grown in greenhouses have become more popular. The volume of fresh tomatoes imported to the U.S. has grown by 176% since 2000, with most of that coming from Mexican greenhouses, according to the Agriculture Department.
Tomatoes grown in the U.S. now make up 30% of the total market share, down from 80% when the trade agreement was signed in 1996, according to the Florida Tomato Exchange, which represents Florida’s tomato growers and packers.
This week’s decision marked a win from the protectionist wing of Trump’s trade team intent on shoring up U.S. industries. It is a blow to some U.S.-based companies such as NatureSweet, which grow most of their tomatoes in greenhouses in Mexico.
“Ending this agreement threatens the ability of companies like ours, which grow in both the U.S. and Mexico, to supply the marketplace with flavorful, vine-ripe specialty tomatoes people love,” said Skip Hulett, chief legal officer at NatureSweet, which is based in San Antonio.
If the agreement is terminated, NatureSweet is likely to pay in excess of $1 million in duties each week on its tomatoes grown in Mexico, Hulett said. A study commissioned by the company in 2023 found prices for fresh tomatoes could go up by 50% if all Mexican tomatoes left the market, which outside analysts said is unlikely.
Robert Guenther, the executive vice president of the Florida Tomato Exchange, said the idea that prices would go up because of a drop in supply from Mexico was a “false narrative.”
U.S. companies that have invested in greenhouses in Mexico aren’t going to suddenly stop growing tomatoes, Guenther said. Meanwhile, U.S. consumers will benefit because “they’d rather have their tomatoes fresh and local.”
The agreement was briefly terminated in 2019, but a new agreement was reached a few months later. The Mexican government isn’t party to the tomato-suspension agreement, and the U.S. duties aren’t subject to trade retaliation as in the case of tariffs.
Write to Kristina Peterson at kristina.peterson@wsj.com