In early April, China announced $3 billion worth of tariffs on 128 U.S. goods including fruit, wine, nuts – and the type of American ginseng grown in Marathon, Wisconsin. With a new 15 percent tariff on their ginseng, Wisconsin growers worry they will lose sales to Canadian producers who compete for the same customers in China.
Farmers markets are a great way to shop fresh and seasonal, but if you can’t get there, you can still find an increasingly impressive selection of tomatoes at your local grocery store. To meet year-round demand, the business of the heirloom tomato has grown global.
For many years now, the U.S. Government has implemented a sugar program that ensures sugar producers and refiners get a minimum price for American-grown sugar. It’s a hidden tax paid for by Peep-lovers everywhere.
Although the steel and aluminum tariffs are promoted by the Trump administration as a strategy to seek fairness for those industries, the tariffs will incite retaliation by trading partners, imposing significant costs on large numbers of U.S. producers and consumers who have nothing to do with these industries’ grievances.
Thanks to trade, this Israeli snack food now featured at American Trader Joe’s stores may spur a whole new generation of Americans who feel the urge to call out – Aba, Ima, Bamba!
North America has a sweet relationship — we are each other’s largest trading partners in chocolate.
Before NAFTA went into effect, Americans ate around one pound of avocados per person each year. Today, 82 percent of the avocados we consume in the United States arrive here from Mexico.
Americans may be among the world’s most prodigious consumer of turkeys, but turkeys have become an increasingly popular holiday food in Mexico. Ninety percent of the turkeys at those Mexican fiestas will have come from American farms – in part thanks to NAFTA.
A whopping 20 percent of the nearly 400 million pounds of cranberries we consume per year are eaten during Thanksgiving week alone. It’s a logical growth strategy to share our love of cranberries with global eaters year-round, but without a trade agreement with our largest markets, we could lose out to growers from other countries.
The Supreme Court answered this question when it decided that under the Tariff Act of March 3, 1883, tomatoes would be considered a vegetable for the purpose of assessing a customs duty. Who knew the answer would relate to trade policy? And thanks to trade, we eat fresh tomatoes all year round.