Unfair Foreign Competition

1. A federal law properly intended to protect American farmworkers from wage competition with temporary (legal) foreign farmworkers on H-2 visas requires that the temporary workers be paid the equivalent of what U.S. farmworkers earn. While this amount varies by region, it averages about $18 per hour in the U.S., nearly 10 times what farmworkers earn in Mexico. The minimum wage rates paid to H-2A workers are called the Adverse Effect Wage Rates.

2. The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement of 2020, like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which preceded it, permitted fresh produce imports to enter the U.S. with no tariffs since 1994. While President Trump has promised across-the-board tariffs of at least 10%, a small tariff amount will not have a sufficient impact on imports to help U.S. farmers. How can they compete successfully with produce grown in developing nations, where there is little to no regulation and wages are one tenth that of the U.S.?

3. The U.S. currently imports 60% of its fresh fruit and 35% of its fresh vegetables.

4. Most of these come from Mexico, which accounts for 51% of the United States’ fresh fruit imports and 69% of its fresh vegetable imports.

5. Over the past 40 years, the U.S. doubled the percentage of fresh fruit it imported, and more than tripled the percentage of imported fresh vegetables.