Some of the key issues are fought on the steps of Congress or working with key agency officials along the border, flying staff and FPAA members to DC for face-to-face meetings, attending conferences, and more. These efforts make the FPAA a recognized expert on trade and agriculture issues as we advocate for your business.
Tomato Suspension Agreement
Commerce Releases Post-Trip Report Following Nogales Auditing Visits
The Department of Commerce published their Nogales Monitoring Trip report following their trip to Nogales in late May for Tomato Suspension Agreement monitoring. During the monitoring visits, Commerce says it identified some “inadvertent noncompliance” that it needs to see addressed and suggested that they will be following up to ensure that necessary adjustments are made.
Commerce stated: “We emphasize that we did not find evidence to indicate that any Signatory or Selling Agent intentionally engaged in noncompliant conduct.”
FPAA Ensures Fair Interpretation of FOB Pricing Under the TSA
On December 22, the U.S. Department of Commerce issued their final ruling in the issue of the definitions of “FOB U.S. Shipping Point” and “Near the Border” that the Florida Tomato Exchange (FTE) attempted to change in order to find a backdoor way to increase the reference prices in the Tomato Suspension Agreement.
Commerce maintained their preliminary determination that the FOB U.S. Shipping Point is the U.S. sales agent facility near the border, which is the position that the FPAA supports. Commerce’s ruling means that FOB Shipping Point is not at the actual land border itself, which is what FTE argued despite industry norms and the intent when negotiating the Agreement. The Commerce ruling ensures that the FOB U.S. Shipping Point price includes all handling charges to the sales agent facility.
Commerce says, “Specifically, all expenses up until the tomatoes are loaded onto the truck at the U.S. shipping point warehouse for onward delivery to the first unaffiliated customer in the United States may be included in the FOB U.S. shipping point price.”
FPAA fights against border stoppages in Texas
International trade was brought to a stop in 2022 by the actions of the Texas Governor. After more than a week and significant harm to U.S. businesses and the food supply chain, the Governor of Texas ceased duplicative inspections on trucks leaving U.S. ports of entry along the Texas/Mexico border after signing agreements with the four Mexican states that border Texas. Many of our members reported trucks were stuck in line from 24 hours to 100 hours after bottlenecks caused by the Texas inspections halted trade and caused many people to divert loads to other ports and other states along the border.
The FPAA worked closely with allied organizations, Federal and state elected officials, and other parties to try and end the harm to the food supply and U.S. companies impacted by these inspections. The FPAA brought national attention to this issue through our outreach to keypress outlets that were unaware of this issue. The FPAA and allied groups spoke with reporters from state and national news media including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Politico, the New York Times, and more.
FPAA Fights Push to Force Florida Juice Content Standards on Mexican Imported Grapefruit
Growers in Florida and Texas have been protesting a clarification, Patch #65, in the inspection procedures for grapefruit under the Florida Marketing Order for Grapefruit. The patch clarifies that imported produce subject to the Florida Marketing Order for Grapefruit is not subject to the juice content requirement as defined by Florida State regulations. However, all imported grapefruit are subject to all other aspects of the Marketing Order for inspections for quality as outlined in the U.S. Grade Standard for Grapefruit from Florida. Since a clarification in 2012 to the Arizona Department of Agriculture, citrus from Mexico has not had to comply with juice content requirements under the Marketing Order because the requirements point to specific State of Florida maturity standards for juice. There is no national juice content requirement for maturity, and the various citrus grape standards for Florida and Texas point to individual state standards, while the Arizona and California grade standards for citrus do not have a juice requirement. In response to Florida and Texas growers calling for state juice content standards to be applied to international trade, the FPAA submitted a letter to USDA outlining concerns with both the juice content requirement designed for Florida being imposed on desert-grown grapefruit. The FPAA strongly believes that any juice content requirement applied to citrus, whether domestic or imported, should be best suited to the growing regions and varieties to accurately reflect the juice content/maturity of the citrus, and that juice requirements should not be used as a non-tariff trade barrier.
The FPAA also pointed out some serious shortfalls with the current Marketing Order system in general. Marketing Orders are created by and managed by the domestic industry, and those standards also apply to U.S. companies that import those same commodities. However, U.S. importers have no opportunity for review, modification, or improvements to Marketing Orders because they do not have representation on the domestic oversight committees. The FPAA strongly suggests that legislative or regulatory changes are identified and adopted to improve the Marketing Order process to better allow for industry input from all companies impacted by the Orders themselves.