The Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association (FFVA) recently provided comments to the Office of the United States Trade Representative as part of the annual review of foreign barriers to U.S. exports and investment. The FFVA letter noted injury to Florida citrus caused by low-priced imports from Mexico and the European Union’s use of scientifically unjustified, non-tariff trade barriers. Letter excerpts follow:
IMPORT CONCERNS
For well over two decades, the Mexican government has engaged in a concerted export targeting scheme to promote the production and exportation of Mexican fruits and vegetables to the U.S. market. Its … unfair subsidies — coupled with widespread dumping, lax regulatory requirements, and unfairly low wages for Mexican workers — have made Mexico the largest exporter of seasonal and perishable produce to the U.S. market during Florida’s winter-spring marketing season.
A separate, compounding import concern in the grapefruit sector is the suspension of grapefruit juice standards for imported grapefruits, which poses a serious threat to American growers and undermines their ability to compete in the American market at a pivotal time. The suspension of the juice content requirement … has created unfair additional hardship for our growers. It has allowed low-quality grapefruit products to flood our market, which has forced our growers to compete against low-cost, subsidized imports. Since grapefruit grown in Florida and Texas must still meet juice content standards, the suspended … standards effectively discriminate in favor of substandard imported grapefruit products.
EUROPEAN UNION (EU) TRADE BARRIERS
The EU … continues to use scientifically unjustified, non-tariff trade barriers to block citrus imports and other products.
One leading concern is the EU’s overly restrictive sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) requirements governing citrus canker and citrus black spot, which have no basis in sound science.
The EU’s practice has been to inspect U.S. citrus imports for citrus canker and citrus black spot by denying entry if even the smallest (pencil point size) speck is found on the fruit upon arrival.
In 2024, the ports in the EU inspected every container of citrus upon arrival … The risk of either an actual find or an alleged find deters Florida growers from shipping more significant volumes to the EU market.
One Florida citrus grower exporting fresh citrus to the EU also previously faced false allegations by the EU regarding citrus black spot. There is no black spot in the area the citrus in question was grown and harvested. Eventually, the grower prevailed but at a substantial loss to the company of approximately $100,000 due to this false claim.
The U.S. government should take all necessary steps to resolve these unfairly restrictive EU SPS inspection requirements and ensure full alignment with sound science.
Additionally, the Trump administration should firmly oppose the EU’s attempts to alter its Maximum Residue Limits (MRL) process by including factors beyond potential human health effects, such as global environmental or social impacts in non-EU countries.
See FFVA’s full letter here.
Source: FFVA
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