Trade tensions escalate: Mexico launches anti-dumping probe targeting US apples, citing domestic industry harm
Last week, Mexico’s Ministry of Economy launched an anti-dumping investigation into the country’s apple imports and their potential negative impact on the domestic industry.
The request was presented by the Union of Fruit Growers of the state of Chihuahua, an organization that represents 85.2 percent of the Mexican apple growers. The federal government officially initiated the investigation through a notice in the Federation’s Official Journal.
The publication also stated that the secretariat had sufficient evidence to show that local growers have been adversely affected by the dumping of imports, driving down the prices of local products by 14 percent since 2022.
Anti-dumping probe puts the spotlight on the US
The government set the investigation between April 2024 and March 2025, but will consider damages to the industry going back to April 2022. The timeframe is crucial because, although the probe targets apple imports regardless of origin, the US accounted for 97.5 percent of foreign apples entering the Mexican market during that period.
It’s unclear what kind of sanctions, if any, the US apple industry is risking with this anti-dumping probe. However, in the document launching the investigation, the Mexican Ministry of Economy opens the door to definitive compensatory quotas on imports, which may be applied to products entering the country up to 90 days before the final resolution is announced.
The notice opens a 23-business-day period for industry actors to submit comments and evidence to the investigators.
This anti-dumping probe comes at a complicated moment for US-Mexican trade relations. Even though most of the commerce between the countries is protected by the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (albeit not for long), tensions have been evident between the Trump Administration and the government of Claudia Sheinbaum.
This is only as the latest move in an ongoing trade war running on the background of a more complicated political scheme that’s bringing Mexico closer to Canada and further away from its immediate neighbor to the north.
*All images are referential.
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