Mexican tomato growers offer new trade deal to US

Hoping to stave off a brewing trade war, Mexican tomato growers said that they would agree to significant increases in the minimum price at which their products can enter the United States and to establish a system to bolster compliance and enforcement.

Their offers come as the Commerce Department considers whether to end a 16-year-old agreement between the United States and some Mexican growers that American tomato farmers say keeps the price of Mexican tomatoes so low that they can barely compete.

To keep the agreement in place, the Mexican growers have proposed raising the minimum price at which they can sell a pound of tomatoes in the United States by 18 percent to 25 percent, depending on the type of tomato. And they pledged to extend the agreement to all growers in Mexico who export to the United States from the roughly 85 percent who are covered by it now.


Source: New York Times