Trump ditched tariffs on Mexican tomatoes - and it may have prevented an onrush of undocumented immigrants
- Donald Trump's decision to ditch provisional tariffs on Mexican tomatoes may have prevented an onrush of undocumented immigrants to the US, according to Bloomberg.
- Hiking the cost of importing Mexican tomatoes would have hit demand, potentially driving farmworkers to cross the US border in search of employment.
- "If we didn't have sales to the US, then people would need to migrate to the US to look for other options, because they don't have them here," Salvador García, a Mexican tomato boss, told Bloomberg.
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Donald Trump's decision to ditch provisional tariffs on Mexican tomatoes may have prevented an onrush of undocumented immigrants to the US, according to Bloomberg.
The Trump administration struck a preliminary deal on August 20 to scrap pending duties of 17.6% on Mexican tomato imports, in return for expanded border inspections of Mexican tomatoes and new reference prices, Bloomberg said. However, the agreement doesn't include the quotas or price controls that many American growers wanted, Bloomberg said.
The president may have backed down for one big reason. Hiking the cost of bringing Mexican tomatoes into the US would have hit demand and hurt Mexico's agricultural industry, potentially driving farmworkers to cross the border in search of employment.
"If we didn't have sales to the US, then people would need to migrate to the US to look for other options, because they don't have them here," Salvador García, a Mexican tomato boss who participated in US-Mexico trade talks, told Bloomberg.
"I need to go wherever the work is," Lorenzo Juárez, a Mexican farmworker who picked strawberries as an undocumented immigrant in California around six years ago, told Bloomberg. Higher tomato tariffs "might mean returning to the north," he added.
The proposed tariffs risked reversing the current trend of net emigration. The number of undocumented Mexicans living in the US dropped from 6.9 million in 2007 to 4.9 million in 2017, according to Pew Research Center.
Slapping tariffs on Mexican tomatoes could have sparked significant migration given the size of the industry and America's importance as a customer. Mexico's tomato industry provides work for around 1.5 million people including pickers, truckers, and restaurant owners, Bloomberg said.
The US imported more than $2 billion worth last year - more than half of its yearly tomato production, Bloomberg said.
As a result, a dropoff in US demand could have a big impact. Given Trump's militant opposition to undocumented Mexican immigrants and a looming election, the president may have decided against making a perceived problem worse.