U.S. to end tomato trade pact with Mexico, threatening duties
Source: Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will resume an anti-dumping investigation into Mexican tomatoes, the Commerce Department said on Thursday, withdrawing from a 2013 managed trade deal that U.S. growers and lawmakers say has failed.
The move opens a new source of trade friction between the United States and Mexico, Commerce said it was giving the required 90-day notice before terminating the six-year-old agreement not to pursue anti-dumping cases against fresh tomato imports from Mexico.
The action could lead to new duties on Mexican tomatoes, higher consumer prices and possible retaliation at a time when the two countries are still wrangling over U.S. tariffs on Mexican steel and aluminum.
A trade war over tomatoes was averted twice since the 1990s, most recently in 2013 with the current deal to put a price floor on Mexican tomatoes sold in the United States while barring U.S. growers from pursuing anti-dumping charges against Mexican exporters.
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BUSINESS NEWS FEBRUARY 7, 2019 / 12:56 PM / UPDATED AN HOUR AGO
David Shepardson, David Lawder
4 MIN READ
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tomatoes-mexico/u-s-to-end-tomato-trade-pact-with-mexico-threatening-duties-idUSKCN1PW27Y
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any remaining inexpensive meals from restaurants (I expect to see many restaurants to close due to higher labor and lease costs, regardless).
I see no mention of whether American growers can even meet current demand if imports become too expensive.
Drip, drip, drip goes the Trump inflation machine......
Not an advocate of always buying lowest-price products at any cost to society, but the day is coming when we will need to preserve our remaining water supplies just for hydration and sanitation. The Colorado River supply system is dying as we speak, and Florida's day is coming.
It has the squirrelly name Suspension Agreement.
Sort of a useful quasi-organized approach:
https://enforcement.trade.gov/tomato/2013-agreement/2013-agreement.html
Full text:
https://enforcement.trade.gov/tomato/2013-agreement/documents/Mexico-Tomatoes-Agreement-20130304.pdf
Text page 19ff give prices. It's worth noting that the prices cross-cut several ways. There's a "summer" price and a "winter" price, and there are tiered prices for non-specialty and specialty (including "heirloom"
. It doesn't cover (I think--I quickly skimmed it) tomatoes intended for processing.
Tomato producers in the US have been up in arms over the pricing, since as prices increase the floor for Mexican imports has held constant. If Mexico undercuts that, even, it's a huge market advantage.
This is could push the price of tomatoes up noticeably, and that'd irritate a lot of conservatives and nonvoters in general who carefully avoid knowing anything about the cross-border children they've been kidnapping and keeping from their parents, traumatizing, otherwise neglecting and actively abusing and "losing."
Let's just hope some realize why the hurt. I especially appreciated a line in a SNL skit that dissed female contestants on a TV show as all looking "like women who don't vote."
GOTV SNL style. 
I was intrigued by those autumn Pharr spikes. Pharr, down near the most southern point of the TX-MX border, turns out to handle the largest volume of fresh produce all year. Maybe that's what Roma tomatoes look like on a graph, or maybe folk in the southwest are still harvesting their last and a lot of that is headed to colder climes? 
In any case, for some reason since 1996 northbound trucks through Reynosa, MX haven't been allowed to use the Hidalgo port, so here they are. Only 4 lanes.
Now THIS is the kind I'm used to. Still have a flower pot shaped like a chicken we purchased the last time we waited in those lines.
