Mexican avocado shipments are worth more than three billion dollars a year, with consumption in the United States set to peak on Sunday when the Kansas City Chiefs will take on the Philadelphia Eagles in New Orleans in the climax of the NFL season.
Trade between the neighboring countries has flourished under a North American free trade deal whose future has been plunged into uncertainty by Trump’s tariff threats.
Michoacan — which covers an area as big as Costa Rica — will have exported some 110,000 tons of the fruit for the Super Bowl by the time it kicks off, according to Mexico’s association of avocado producers and exporters.
It is the importers in the United States who would be responsible for paying the tariffs and most probably try to pass the extra cost on to the consumer.
For now, Trump has agreed to delay the levies for a month, until early March, after Mexico pledged to deploy 10,000 more troops to its border with the United States to combat drug and migrant flows.
As the Super Bowl approached, farmers were working at full capacity to meet demand.
