On June 16, the Florida Tomato Exchange (FTE) filed a request with the Department of Commerce to terminate the Tomato Suspension Agreement. This request was based on established facts and U.S. anti-dumping law. Days later, the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas (FPAA), a trade group that represents importers of Mexican produce, issued a press release on the issue.
In the release, the FPAA didn’t make a single legal argument. In 2019, the Mexican industry and FPAA went to court to prove that Mexican tomatoes weren’t being dumped and weren’t materially injuring the U.S. tomato industry. They lost the case on both counts before the Department of Commerce and the International Trade Commission. It was determined that Mexican tomatoes were being dumped at an average margin of 20.91 percent, even with the previous suspension agreements in place.
The current suspension agreement suspends those margins from going into effect as anti-dumping duties. Such agreements allow the Department of Commerce to suspend anti-dumping duties as long as the agreements stop injury caused by unfair imports. None of the tomato suspension agreements, dating back to 1996, have worked to stop the injury caused by dumped Mexican tomatoes, which is why the FTE finally asked the Commerce Department to terminate the suspension.
The Florida Tomato Exchange is the “domestic petitioner” in the anti-dumping case and has received broad support on this issue from tomato growers across the country. This list includes growers in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. The U.S. anti-dumping law requires anti-dumping petitions to have majority support from the national industry.
With Mexico now controlling almost 70 percent of the U.S. tomato market, the FPAA’s claim that FTE is seeking a monopoly is absurd. The FTE seeks the survival of the U.S. tomato industry before it is crushed by unfairly traded Mexican tomatoes. Anti-dumping duties imposed under U.S. law, following USMCA and WTO rules, will not stop market access for Mexican tomatoes. The duties would fall to zero if Mexican tomato exporters price their tomatoes fairly, according to the law.
The FPAA threat that Mexico would retaliate against other U.S. industries is bizarre. USMCA and WTO rules ensure that Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. all respect each other’s anti-dumping laws and the resulting legal proceedings. A retaliation would violate both the USMCA and WTO.
The Tomato Suspension Agreement should be terminated because it has not met the statutory requirement to protect against unfairly traded Mexican tomatoes, which continue to injure the American tomato industry. This failure requires a legal default to anti-dumping duties on Mexican tomatoes.
For more information:
Michael Schadler
Florida Tomato Exchange
Tel.: +1 (407) 660-1949
michael@FloridaTomatoExchange.com
www.FloridaTomatoExchange.com