When the Trump administration tore up a trade agreement that allowed fresh tomatoes to be imported from Mexico without tariffs, the White House framed it as a victory for “American farmers, growers, and business owners.”
Experts in the produce industry, however, warned that consumers would be paying the price.
The end of the Tomato Suspension Agreement between the U.S. and Mexico was a “big concern,” Javier “JJ” Badillo, chair of the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas (FPAA)’s tomato division, told FreshFruitPortal.com, a trade publication, in July. Badillo predicted higher prices and diminished volumes of fresh tomatoes, even though it would take “six to nine months” for the consequences to become apparent.
Chalk up another victory for the experts over the politicians.
Nine months after the Trump administration blew up that trade agreement, prices for fresh tomatoes at American grocery stores are skyrocketing. A pound of tomatoes cost an average of $2.26 in March, according to the latest consumer price index report released last week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). That’s the highest price recorded in eight years, and a 15 percent increase from February to March.
Tomato prices are now 23 percent higher than they were in March 2025, according to the BLS. That means tomato prices have risen significantly faster than overall inflation (up 3.3 percent in the past year) and food prices as a whole (which are up 2.7 percent). Even gas prices, which get more attention, are up just 18.9 percent in the past year.
So why are tomatoes suddenly much more expensive? In part, it’s because tomatoes imported from Mexico are now subject to tariffs. With the tomato trade agreement gone, Mexican tomatoes are now subject to a tariff of about 17 percent—and, like with many other products, the tariff gets passed along down the supply chain.
There’s also been a notable reduction in tomato imports.
“Tomato imports from Mexico declined by over $500 million,” reported Joseph Glauber, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, in a report published this week. That decline, Glauber notes, was due to the elimination of the “long-standing agreement that allowed Mexico to export tomatoes to the US” and the new tariffs “that resulted in fewer imports.”
You might expect higher prices for fresh tomatoes to drive up the price of products made from tomatoes—everything from pizza sauce to ketchup. That’s unlikely, however, because the supply chains are actually quite different.
The market for processed tomato products is highly concentrated in the United States. About 95 percent of tomatoes used for processing originate in California. Meanwhile, the U.S. imports about 70 percent of its supply of fresh tomatoes, and the vast majority comes from Mexico.
Higher prices for fresh tomatoes are good news for American farmers, as the White House said last year when terminating the trade agreement. Still, the administration’s reasoning is quite telling. As the administration was considering terminating the tomato trade deal, Commerce Department officials told The Wall Street Journal last year that the deal “has failed to protect U.S. tomato growers from unfairly priced Mexican imports.”
That’s a good illustration of how the Trump administration approaches economic issues. Framing trade in terms of “fairness” is a typical left-wing tactic—and it always misses huge parts of the picture.
Those imported tomatoes from Mexico don’t just provide inexpensive salad and sandwich components for Americans. They also support tons of American jobs. A 2025 study calculated that imported tomatoes provided more than $8.3 billion in economic impact in the U.S.
When the Trump administration prioritizes the interests of American tomato farmers over the interests of consumers and the rest of the tomato-related market, it is not scoring a victory for fairness or sound economic principles. It is just playing favorites and expecting everyone else to bear the cost.
The post Trump Ended Free Trade for Mexican Tomatoes. Prices Are Up 23 Percent in the Last Year. appeared first on Reason.com.
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