The price of your strawberries could go up this winter if a coalition of Florida strawberry producers has its way. The Department of Commerce is expected to decide within the next few days on a petition from Strawberry Growers for Free Trade that claims Mexican exporters are undercutting the costs of their fresh winter strawberries to try to sell more.
The petition focuses on an “antidumping duty,” which is a special tax that the U.S. government puts on foreign goods to try to stop them from selling at significantly lower prices than American products, explained Marc Busch, an expert on international trade policy and law and a professor of International Business Diplomacy at Georgetown University.
Strawberries make up the bulk of berries that Americans consume, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). But while strawberries are traditionally a summer fruit, production in warmer areas of the country and the world have allowed consumers to nosh on them year-round.
Mexico supplies about 95% of imported strawberries to the U.S., while 98% of strawberries produced in America come from Florida and California. Americans have taken advantage of that constant supply, tossing back around eight pounds of the fruit per person each year.
But the fight over the price of fresh winter strawberries imported from Mexico is complicated, and dives into an area of economics most Americans aren’t familiar with. “It’s like a big game,” Busch said.
While a lot is uncertain at this point, Busch says it’s fair to anticipate that you may pay more for strawberries this winter.
What’s driving this?
The issue traces back to Dec. 31, 2025, when the Department of Commerce received an antidumping duty petition from Strawberry Growers for Free Trade on imports of fresh winter strawberries from Mexico. That petition was published in the Federal Register in February and details everything that’s happened since then.
According to the Strawberry Growers for Free Trade, imports of winter strawberries from Mexico are being, or are likely to be, sold in the United States at less than fair market value. “Imports of such products are materially injuring, or threatening material injury to, the winter strawberries industry in the United States,” the petition reads.
The Strawberry Growers for Free Trade claims that the price of imported strawberries from Mexico is 18.32% cheaper than it should be, and urges the Department of Commerce to raise tariff prices to allegedly even things out.
This is not a new thing.
Antidumping duty petitions are filed a lot, according to Busch. “They don’t cost an awful lot of money to file, and they create economic uncertainty,” he said. “They have a habit of being effective, even if Commerce rejects them.”
He cites the case of the steel industry, where producers may scale back on production for fear that an antidumping duty will go into effect and interfere with their profit margin. “In some circles, antidumping duties are considered the ultimate nuisance because they can work, even if they don’t work,” Busch said. “In the case of steel, simply filing an antidumping petition can raise your stock price.”
It’s not clear if strawberry producers in Mexico would scale back production over fears of a tariff this winter, he said.
What does this mean for the cost of your strawberries?
No one knows at the moment, but it doesn’t look good for the average American shopper. “There’s no doubt this will impact prices,” said James Mann, a partner in the Food and Agriculture division of global management consultant Kearney’s Consumer Practice. “Mexican growers are already preparing for the tariff eventuality and are cutting back some of their planting practices, thereby reducing supply. We’ll likely see the result of that cutting back and subsequent price increases in the November to early springtime frame.”
The Department of Commerce has been investigating for months why Mexican producers are able to export strawberries at a relatively cheap price to America. There can be a lot of reasons for this outside of just trying to sell more strawberries, Busch said. “It could be the weather. It could be the lack of domestic labor willing to pick strawberries in the U.S.,” he added. “It could be a lot of things that have nothing to do with Mexican exporters purposely trying to undercut prices.”
Even if the Department of Commerce decides that a tariff of 18.32% is needed to even things out, Busch says Americans are unlikely to pay that much more in stores. “The Mexican exporters could reduce the price, in which case, the full 18.32% wouldn’t necessarily hit American consumers,” he says. The strawberry importers may also end up taking a smaller profit margin, Busch added.
But the less exporters and importers are willing to eat into their own profit margins, “the closer we are to American consumers feeling the pain,” Busch said.
If a full 18.32% tariff were to go into effect, it would likely lead to some increase in prices. The average retail price for fresh strawberries is $3.80 per pound, according to USDA data. If the full tariff was put into place and prices increased by 18.32%, that means you’d end up paying about 70 cents more for a pound of fresh strawberries in the future.
Strawberries could also become scarce.
Given how many strawberries the average American consumes each year, it could be hard for producers in the country to keep up with the demand if Mexican exporters scale back over rising costs, Busch said. “We’ll still see year-round products on the shelves,” Mann added. “Mexico will continue to produce, but you’ll see fewer growers, and that’ll translate into higher prices.” Mann says it’s unlikely that another country would step in to help. “Strawberries are far too fragile and they’d be old by the time produce gets to the shelves,” he said.
That can only benefit American producers — and Busch says they probably don’t care how much that impacts the average American strawberry fan.
“Scarcity increases prices,” he said. “The strawberry growers in the U.S. are not particularly concerned with affordable access to this particular fruit. They’re worried about their margins.”
Busch doesn’t expect the Department of Commerce to rule in favor of a full 18.32% tariff on strawberries. “Commerce will survey Mexican growers and the data are likely to cast a long shadow over the allegations that you’re seeing in terms of undercutting costs,” he said. Still, fans of this popular berry are understandably already nervous.