Not to alarm you too much, but a tomato war has been declared between the United States and Mexico. From New Food Economy:
The U.S. Department of Commerce on Tuesday is expected to pull out of the Tomato Suspension Agreement (TSA), a treaty with Mexican tomato growers that’s governed imported tomatoes since 1996. Because more than 70 percent of the fresh tomatoes found in grocery stores across the U.S. come from Mexico, prep yourself for sticker shock. Originally enacted because the Commerce Department suspected Mexican growers of dumping undervalued tomatoes into the U.S. market, the agreement placed a floor price on Mexican tomatoes and, in return, suspended the dumping investigation undertaken by Commerce. The TSA has been reviewed, updated, and renewed every five years since its inception. But since last year, the Florida Tomato Exchange, a trade organization for Florida tomato growers, has lobbied to terminate the agreement, rather than renew it.
A brief look at the casus beefsteak:
The organization purports that Mexican growers, by virtue of Mexican government subsidies and the low cost of Mexican labor, are able to sell tomatoes for a reduced cost over their U.S. counterparts, and that some growers are still skirting the agreement and taking advantage of loopholes to dump cheap tomatoes into the U.S. market.
We can study the actual issues another time. Instead, I’d like to check on the status of long-standing United States treaties because they’ve been having a rough couple of years. NAFTA? Gone, in name, anyway. TPP? Strangled in the crib. Paris Accord On Climate Change? Let it all burn. The Iran Deal? Negated by anger from Fox News Channel. The INF arms-control treaty? Bombs away. The U.N. Arms Trade Treaty? Sorry, we have an NRA. And just the other day, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced his intention to turn a Reagan-era agreement between the U.S. and Canada over sea rights in the Arctic into a dead letter.
I awake every morning terrified that the president* has sold Alaska back to the Russians, or that I may now need a passport to visit Nebraska in the newly reacquired French territory of Louisiana.
