With the election of Donald Trump as US president (again), economists have raised concerns about the consequences of introducing tariffs on imports, not least from Mexico
As the world steels itself for another four years of Donald Trump, analysts are faced with the daunting prospect of parsing the former president and presidential candidate’s statements before judging what he will actually do as US president.
In the fruit business, tariffs are the number one issue likely to affect both companies and consumers in the short term. Trump has previously referred to tariffs in glowing terms: “the greatest thing ever invented”, he called them, and “the most beautiful word in the dictionary”. And he’s got all the words, don’t forget.
Even if the rhetoric lately has centred on using tariffs to push Mexico to “close” the border, whatever that might entail, in Trump’s first term in office, tariffs were mainly targeted at imports from China.
Interestingly, duties on more than US$300bn of Chinese goods have mostly been maintained by the Biden administration.
But Mexico would be another matter entirely. The US imported US$476bn of goods from Mexico last year, according to the Washington Post, including US$2.7bn worth of avocados alone. In 2022, Mexico supplied more than half of the US’s fresh fruit imports, according to the Department of Agriculture.
Economists have voiced concerns that tariffs on Mexican fruit imports would drive up food costs for US consumers. And Trump has gone much further in recent speeches, suggesting new import duties of as high as 20 per cent, not just on Mexico, but on every nation.
