{"id":55290,"date":"2025-04-16T20:48:38","date_gmt":"2025-04-17T00:48:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=55290"},"modified":"2025-04-16T20:49:01","modified_gmt":"2025-04-17T00:49:01","slug":"florida-tomato-growers-rejoice-over-trump-administration-decision-to-end-u-s-mexico-agreement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2025\/04\/16\/florida-tomato-growers-rejoice-over-trump-administration-decision-to-end-u-s-mexico-agreement\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida tomato growers rejoice over Trump administration decision to end U.S.-Mexico agreement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In a major victory for Florida tomato growers, the U.S. Commerce Department has announced<\/a> that it’s withdrawing from a 2019 agreement that had suspended an antidumping investigation into fresh tomato imports from Mexico.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That termination, set to take effect July 14, means most tomatoes from Mexico will be subject to a 20.91% tariff.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cThis action will allow U.S. tomato growers to compete fairly in the marketplace,\u201d said the Commerce Department in a statement issued Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cThis is a major victory for American agriculture,\u201d Robert Guenther, Executive Vice President of the Florida Tomato Exchange<\/a>, said in a statement. \u201cFor decades, American tomato farmers have suffered from unfair trade practices by Mexican tomato exporters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTerminating this agreement and enforcing U.S. trade laws is the only way to finally give domestic growers the relief they\u2019ve long deserved,\u201d he added. \u201cWe thank the [Trump] Administration for standing strong in support of American farmers and the rule of law against unfair foreign trade practices.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Skyrocketing tomato imports from Mexico<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group reported that Mexican tomato imports to the U.S. skyrocketed nearly 400%, from more than 800 million pounds in 1994 to about 4 billion pounds in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Florida Tomato Exchange, which represents tomato growers statewide, said its industry has been decimated by \u201can influx of cheap Mexican tomatoes\u201d since 1994 \u2014 the year the then North American Free Trade Agreement was signed by the U.S., Mexico and Canada. They said hundreds of growers were forced to close down, killing half the industry since NAFTA went into effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Florida, said he has argued for years that the U.S.-Mexico agreement \u201cfailed to protect American producers from unfair foreign trade practices.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[The] decision from President Trump\u2019s administration is a major win for Florida farmers and growers across the country as they have suffered for years while the federal government allowed our markets to be flooded with artificially cheap tomatoes from Mexican producers grown with child and forced labor<\/a>, making it impossible for local producers to compete,\u201d said Scott in a statement<\/a>. U.S. Rep. Mario D\u00edaz-Balart, R-Miami, said the move withdraw from the 2019 agreement was long overdue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor too long, Florida farmers have been hurt by one-sided foreign trade deals like the Tomato Suspension Agreement, which flooded U.S. markets with Mexican tomatoes and put American tomato growers at a significant disadvantage,\u201d he said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is a big win for Florida farmers,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is another example of President Trump\u2019s America First trade policies in action, and I thank him and his Administration for standing with our farmers and promoting fair trade policies.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a major victory for Florida tomato growers, the U.S. Commerce Department has announced that it’s withdrawing from a 2019 agreement that had suspended an antidumping investigation into fresh tomato imports from… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"17","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNVwvMDRcL2Rvd25sb2FkLTItMy53ZWJwP2ZpdD0yNTklMkMxOTUmc3NsPTEiLCJ0eHQiOiJGbG9yaWRhIHRvbWF0byBncm93ZXJzIHJlam9pY2Ugb3ZlciBUcnVtcCBhZG1pbmlzdHJhdGlvbiBkZWNpc2lvbiB0byBlbmQgVS5TLi1NZXhpY28gYWdyZWVtZW50IiwidGVtcGxhdGUiOiJoaWdod2F5IiwiYmxvZ19pZCI6MTYzMDQwNjYxfQ.RFtaepF08-weWo4FulgBSudgvuf0DuQtuoPJCeJrxQMMQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":55291,"url":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/download-2-3.webp","type":"image\/jpeg"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[11343],"class_list":["post-55290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-regional-and-world-news","tag-florida-tomato-growers-rejoice-over-trump-administration-decision-to-end-u-s-mexico-agreement"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55290"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55293,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55290\/revisions\/55293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}