Heated debate over market definition in landmark strawberry trade probe
United States agencies are weighing whether Florida strawberry producers have enough industry backing to move forward with an antidumping case against Mexican imports. Growers and opponents clashed over market definition, injury, and supply at recent federal hearings.
The US Department of Commerce is polling domestic producers to determine whether the petition meets statutory industry-support thresholds. This comes as the US International Trade Commission (ITC) also considers whether Mexican winter strawberry imports hurt the local sector.
Commerce plans to decide by mid-February if sufficient industry support exists, MLex reports.
The original petition, filed in early January by a coalition of Florida growers operating as Strawberry Growers for Fair Trade, alleges that Mexican producers dumped fresh and chilled winter strawberries into the US market from January 2022 to March 2025.
They alleged that this suppressed prices and harmed US growers. The petitioners include Astin Farms, BBI Produce and Berry Boss, Mathis Farms, Simmons Farms, Sizemore Farms, and Sweet Life Farms.
According to the petition, Mexican strawberries account for 99 percent of US strawberry imports, and shipments rose 14 percent from 2022 to 2024. The scope covers fruit harvested or imported from November 1 to March 31.
Market definition at the core
A central issue for both agencies is whether winter strawberries constitute a distinct product and whether the relevant market is regional or national. Regarding the market definition debate, petitioners argue that Florida supplies a distinct eastern winter market, while respondents contend that the strawberry trade is in a national market year-round.
Daniel Pickard, the attorney representing the petitioners and chair of the international trade and national security practice group at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, says Commerce is assessing a fragmented sector.
“In agriculture cases, unlike major industrial goods cases, you frequently have a lot of smaller players,” he notes, calling the strawberry growers a “broad industry.”
Pickard adds that the petitioners have more than 50 percent industry support under both regional and national market definitions. Meanwhile, Commerce is examining whether the petitioners represent at least 25 percent of total US strawberry production and whether more than 50 percent of production supports the case. However, opponents dispute the petitioners' claims about market definition in filings and testimony.
Challenging the proposed market definition, Yujin McNamara of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, representing Driscoll’s, writes that the petition “contains baseless assertions that are not supported by data and fails to take into account critical data necessary to assess industry support.”
“Petitioner makes the fatal flaw of relying only on the support of producers located in Florida, ignoring the rest of the country, and even the rest of its own proposed region,” the brief states.
Jeffrey Winton of Winton and Chapman, representing Mexican producer San Vicente Camalu, argues in a January brief that the proposed region encompasses “68 percent of the total US population.”
“A concentration of shipments by regional producers in that region would, therefore, provide little evidence that there is an isolated regional market,” he writes.
At the ITC’s preliminary injury hearing, Tom Perosa, a professor from Rutgers University, testified against the regional market definition, noting that California strawberries reached eastern markets “during more than half the reporting weeks and as much as 70 percent of the weeks.”
“Again, this is evidence that strawberries are a national market even in the winter months,” he says.
Growers cite injury, buyers warn of supply gaps
Florida growers told the ITC that Mexican imports have surged at prices that force domestic fruit out of the market. At the hearing, Kenneth Parker, executive director of the Florida Strawberry Growers Association, testified that Mexican imports increased more than 400 percent from 2000 to 2019.
“Many Florida farms have gone out of business in the last twenty years,” he says. “Each year, it gets more and more difficult to compete with the volume of Mexican imports. So even though Florida growers have attempted to increase production in a time of increasing demand, the majority of this market growth has been captured by Mexican strawberries.”
John Sizemore, owner of Sizemore Farms, said in the same hearing that low-priced imports linger in the market.
He explains it’s “heartbreaking when you have to pick strawberries from your fields and then throw them on the ground because you can’t sell them against the cheaply priced Mexican imports.”
“To say the least, the impact on our farms’ financial health has been devastating,” he adds.
Pickard told regulators that dumped imports have led to price suppression and millions of pounds of strawberries discarded by US growers.
Importers, retailers, and Mexican officials counter that imports remain necessary to meet winter demand and that other factors hurt Florida production.
Beyond arguments on market definition, Rodrigo Andrés Velázquez García of Mexico’s Secretariat of Economy testified that imports fill a structural supply gap.
“Without imports of strawberries from Mexico, year-round consumption would not have been possible in the United States, as the US industry simply lacks the production necessary to respond to demand in the winter season,” he says.
Retailers echoed concerns about reliability. Stefanie Katzman, CEO of Katzman Produce, said weather disruptions regularly affect Florida supplies.
“These and other factors, which have nothing to do with supply from Mexico, limit supply during Florida’s growing season,” Katzman says. “These weather conditions can also affect the quality and where we can sell the strawberries. For example, this week, a freeze and cold weather have cut off supply from Florida. I have to source from California and Mexico to supply my customers.”
Martha Hilton, vice president of produce and floral for Wegmans Food Markets, testified that Florida supply skews conventional rather than organic, while Mark Greeff of Driscoll’s said the company shipped more than 100 million pounds of strawberries east of the Mississippi last winter to supplement regional supply.
The case unfolds as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement approaches a scheduled review in July, adding broader trade-policy significance for produce shippers on both sides of the border.
*All images are referential.
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