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IMPORTED TOMATOES FROM MEXICO HAVE SOME U.S. GROWERS SEEING RED

tomatoes

IMPORTED TOMATOES FROM MEXICO HAVE SOME U.S. GROWERS SEEING RED

Tomato Trade Tensions Simmering Again

Nothing says “summer” like a fresh tomato. And thanks to trade, tomatoes aren’t just a seasonal treat for Americans. A trade policy battle, however, over our favorite little red vegetable that had simmered on the back burner for decades recently heated up again and might have threatened our ability to enjoy tomatoes year round.

While NAFTA – now replaced by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) – eliminated trade barriers for most agricultural exports, trade in tomatoes between the United States and Mexico remains complicated to this day. U.S. growers have made a fresh push for the Administration to protect domestic tomato production against imports of increasingly competitive Mexican produce.

Seasons of Discontent

The United States is the second largest producer of tomatoes in the world, but with each American eating an average of more than 20 pounds of tomatoes a year, we import them to satisfy high demand. Mexico is the largest exporter in the world and the United States’ top international supplier. Of the $2.4 billion worth of tomatoes the United States imported in 2019, $2.1 billion came from Mexico, representing 87.5 percent of total U.S. tomato imports.

MX imports of tomoatoes

Although Mexico exports a wide variety of seasonal produce to the United States ranging from bell peppers to blueberries, it’s trade in tomatoes that has been a consistent source of tension. That’s because tomatoes are one of the highest valued fresh vegetable crops in the United States and Mexican tomatoes directly compete with tomatoes grown in the state of Florida during the winter and early summer.

Over the last two decades, U.S. tomato production has declined substantially while Mexican imports increased. And while Florida is still the top tomato state in the nation, production there has declined steadily since 2000. Florida once had 300 tomato growers, but now has fewer than 50. Labor is one major reason for this change. Fresh tomatoes are largely picked by hand – and farm workers are increasingly hard to find and expensive.

MX v FLA

Animated Suspension

Throughout this downward trend, the American tomato industry has complained that Mexican growers have an unfair advantage. The Mexican tomato industry has significantly ramped up production not just thanks to lower labor costs, but also extensive support from the Mexican government in the form of capital for producers, investment in infrastructure and technology to modernize the industry, and other subsidies throughout the supply chain.

The American tomato industry first filed a case with U.S. trade agencies back in the 1970s seeking relief from competition from low priced tomatoes from Mexico, which they alleged were being sold at less than fair market value in the United States (or “dumped”). The antidumping case was ultimately dropped, but after NAFTA was enacted, Florida tomato growers renewed their complaint, claiming Mexican tomatoes were a threat to the domestic industry. The U.S. International Trade Commission found in favor of U.S. growers. Facing potential antidumping tariffs on their exports, Mexican growers in 1996 entered into what’s known as a “suspension agreement.”

By law, the Commerce Department can suspend an antidumping duty or countervailing duty investigation when the parties in the case reach an agreement that meets certain statutory and policy criteria. Under the tomato suspension agreement, the Mexican industry agreed to reduce production and meet a minimum price floor for fresh tomatoes. Suspension agreements require ongoing monitoring to ensure compliance through a process that is completely separate from NAFTA or USMCA. The tomato suspension agreement of 1996 has been updated and expanded three times: in 2002, 2008 and 2013.

To-may-to, To-mah-to, Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off

The suspension agreements were intended to prevent further dumping and injury to the U.S. tomato industry. However, growers in the U.S. southeast have said the agreements were not successful in achieving that goal because provisions were either unenforceable or subject to loopholes. With those concerns in mind, the Florida Tomato Exchange submitted a request to the Commerce Department in November 2018 to terminate the 2013 suspension agreement.

In February 2019, the Commerce Department notified the Mexican government of its intention to withdraw. On May 7, the U.S. government officially terminated the 2013 suspension agreement and enacted a 17.56 percent duty on imported Mexican tomatoes. Some expressed concern the move would stir up a trade war between the two countries, leading to higher prices for consumers and a reduction in the winter tomato supply as Mexican growers shifted their acreage to other crops, though the Administration stated its willingness to resolve the dispute even as its antidumping investigation continued.

Then, in September 2019, the Administration announced a new suspension agreement had been reached with Mexican exporters, effectively putting an end to the investigation. The new agreement is meant to protect U.S. producers from being undercut on prices. It includes audits and border inspections to prevent imports of low-quality tomatoes that could have a similar effect of depressing prices.

USMCA’s Rotten Tomatoes

At the same time that the antidumping investigation was playing out, USMCA was picking up steam on Capitol Hill. After receiving bipartisan support in the House and Senate, USMCA was signed into law on January 29, 2020 and entered into force on July 1, 2020, officially replacing NAFTA. It is easy to see why most American farmers and ranchers rallied support for USMCA. Canada is the top market for U.S. farm products, with Mexico following in the number two spot. U.S. agricultural exports to both countries totaled $44 billion in 2018.

However, one vocal segment of the U.S. agriculture industry was not entirely happy with the USMCA provisions. Fresh produce growers in the U.S. southeast expressed concern that Mexico continued to undercut their prices, dumping cheap fruits and vegetables in the market during their peak harvest time. Farmers from states including Georgia and Florida argued they had watched NAFTA erode their share of the U.S. market and that USMCA was an opportunity to provide a remedy.

American growers from the southern region pushed for new protections in USMCA through antidumping and countervailing duty provisions as a way to even the playing field from what they see as unfair subsidies, labor and environmental practices by Mexico that make U.S.-grown specialty crops like tomatoes and blueberries less competitive.

To create some leverage in the USMCA negotiations, lawmakers from the southeast region introduced legislation, the Defending Domestic Produce Production Act, designed to make it easier for seasonal growers to petition the Commerce Department and the U.S. International Trade Commission to investigate Mexico’s subsidies and dumping of cheap produce. This change would measure injury to industries with short harvest windows (like tomatoes and strawberries) on a seasonal basis rather than having to prove nation-wide, year-round harm.

Congressional letter on tomatoes

Hybrid Views in the Produce Industry

But the U.S. produce industry is not unified in its criticism of seasonal produce imports from Mexico or in its support for a trade remedy to the problem. Growers and distributors in western states like California and Arizona argued against including changes in USMCA because many of those companies work in both the United States and Mexico to ensure fresh produce is available year round. They also worried that Mexico would use the same approach against American produce like apples and grapes. Industry groups in Nogales, Arizona opposed the changes as well, citing a negative ripple effect on their economy if the produce from Mexico that passes through gateway communities were significantly reduced.

Twenty-three Senators and U.S. House members from Arizona, Texas, and California sent a letter to the U.S. Trade Representative opposing attempts to insert seasonal antidumping language into USMCA. The lawmakers wrote: “using USMCA as a vehicle for pursuing seasonal agriculture trade remedies risks pitting different regions of the country against each other.”

While the Trump Administration initially seemed sympathetic to the southeastern growers’ complaints, the provisions ultimately did not make it into USMCA given the concerns of other producers in the sector who would be potential targets for retaliation from Mexico. But the Administration committed to continue an investigation into the issue.

Is the Dispute Ripening Again?

In August 2020, USTR, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and U.S. Department of Commerce held two hearings to collect feedback about whether trade policies are harming American seasonal produce growers. The hearings are part of an effort promised by the Administration to respond to any trade distorting practices within two months of USCMA going into effect.

At the listening sessions, lawmakers and growers from southeastern states spoke out about how their sector is impacted by subsidies and other practices by Mexico that they believe are hurting American agriculture. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) asked the Administration to use Section 301 authority to investigate and potentially take retaliatory action against Mexico.

Following the hearings, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said he is working with USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to come up with a plan to address the growers’ concerns by September 1. What action the Administration may take to protect American producers – notably located in states like Florida that may be key for the president’s re-election bid – remains to be seen.

What we do know is that southeastern produce growers seem cautiously optimistic that the new suspension agreement for tomatoes will be more effective than past iterations. And while most Americans are likely unaware of the ongoing tomato trade tension between the U.S. and Mexico, shoppers undoubtedly benefit from year-round access to affordable fresh produce.

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Sarah Hubbart provides communications strategy, content creation, and social media management for TradeVistas. A native of rural Northern California, Sarah has melded communications and policy throughout her career in Washington, D.C., serving in government affairs, issues management, and coalition building roles in the agricultural sector. She is an alum of California State University, Chico and George Washington University.

This article originally appeared on TradeVistas.org. Republished with permission.

AFTE

AFTE SEEKS TO SHARPEN THE TEETH OF THE U.S.-MEXICO-CANADA AGREEMENT

The Alliance for Trade Enforcement—a Washington, D.C.-based coalition of trade associations and business groups dedicated to ending unfair trade practices—submitted a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer to coincide with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s July 8 visit to the White House.

President López Obrador met with President Trump and senior administration officials to commemorate the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which entered into force that same day.

In the letter, AFTE commends Lighthizer for holding Canada and Mexico to the commitments outlined in USMCA, including the upholding of intellectual property protections, improving enforcement of Mexico’s anti-piracy strategy, and reducing barriers to the Canadian market for U.S. dairy farmers. But AFTE also urged the trade ambassador to continue working to eliminate unfair trade barriers that harm American companies and “workers in every industry, from manufacturing and agriculture to the biopharmaceutical and service sectors.”

“Our coalition looks forward to working with Ambassador Lighthizer to level the playing field between American businesses and our trading partners,” said AFTE Executive Director Brian Pomper.

drugs biopharmaceutical

WHAT TODAY’S USMCA DEBATE HAS TO DO WITH THE DRUGS OF TOMORROW

The political winds seem to be blowing in favor of a Congressional vote on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Free Trade Agreement (USMCA) yet this fall. But before they vote, some Members of Congress want to talk over a few issues with the Trump administration’s negotiators. They are pressing the administration to lower intellectual property protections for the U.S. biopharmaceutical industry because they say the agreement’s provisions protecting original data generated by pharmaceutical inventors will drive up the price of prescription drugs.

Their arguments strike a political nerve but don’t offer a complete picture of this complex and evolving industry. The USMCA debate reflects a domestic difference in views. While the United States works to develop its regulatory framework for newer drugs, many other markets are further behind. As important as it is, the issue of data protection for biologic drugs is not well understood. We’ll try to cover the top lines.

Pieces of the Intellectual Property Puzzle

For American innovators of biopharmaceuticals, gaining access to overseas markets requires not only securing regulatory approvals; the policy environment must also be conducive to marketing their products, which includes a value-based approach to pricing, procurement, reimbursement policies – and intellectual property protections.

There are various facets to the intellectual property (IP) protections needed to incentivize massive investments in pharmaceutical innovation and to enable the recovery of those costs once a drug is commercialized. Patents are part of the package and so is the protection of proprietary data, the issue at the fore in discussions about USMCA.

These protections are particularly important to American companies. The intellectual property attached to 57 percent of the world’s new medicines was created in the United States. That’s no accident. Research and development activities flourish in countries where IP frameworks are well developed and enforced.

70% drug dev

What is Data Protection?

To achieve marketing approval from a regulatory oversight agency such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and its counterparts in other countries, innovator pharmaceutical companies submit data on the outcomes of their research and years of clinical trials demonstrating the drug is effective and safe. The cost and risks of developing the original data and product fall to the inventor.

When a generic producer or producer of a “biosimilar” seeks approval, they are often afforded the short cut of relying on the inventor’s data. To ensure a balance between incentivizing drug discovery and development while also providing opportunities for lower-cost copies to become available, the inventor’s data may be protected for a period of time against disclosure to generic or biosimilar producer. During this time, any competitor is free to undertake their own data and seek marketing approvals on that basis.

For How Long?

Provisions on data protection are not new in domestic regulations or in trade agreements. Since the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) in 1995, World Trade Organization (WTO) members have agreed not to disclose clinical data submitted to regulatory authorities to obtain marketing approval for pharmaceutical products, thereby protecting such data “against unfair commercial use”.

Negotiators of the TRIPS Agreement contemplated specifying that data protection should be no less than five years, but ultimately refrained from including a specific timeframe, leaving it to the discretion of WTO members in their national regulations. NAFTA, which took effect in 1994, provides a minimum of five years.

Enter a New Type of Drug

The timing of these provisions is relevant to the debate today. The TRIPs and NAFTA provisions apply to new “chemical entities,” meaning small molecule drugs – that is, most drugs on the market to date. These types of drugs are capable of being replicated through chemical synthesis to make generic drugs. For this reason, regulators tend to agree that requiring duplicate data from generics would be an inefficient use of resources and unnecessary testing of patients, as long as the generic product is proven “bioequivalent” to its reference product.

Biologics are newer medicines. They are large, complex molecules that are made from living cells to produce the required proteins. This manufacturing process is vastly more complex. A follow-on product is not identical, but rather structurally similar and thus called a “biosimilar”. An exact replica is not possible, and patients cannot automatically be switched from a biologic to its biosimilar without risk of adverse effects.

Given the differences between biologics and small molecule drugs, they are regulated differently, and the IP protections have been applied differently. Biologics are largely defined by their manufacturing processes and regulatory approval of biosimilars does not require identity with the reference product, so biologics must often rely only on process patents versus a product patent. Innovator companies argue a longer term of data protection is needed to bridge the differences in patent protection or to offset the lack of patent protections in some countries, while allowing them to recover the increased cost of generating the original data.

New Trade Provisions for Biologics

Given the longer innovation cycle and the increased cost and complexity of biologics, many governments have provided longer periods of data protection for biologics than for small molecule drugs.

In the United States, the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act signed into law by President Obama in 2016, provides for a 12-year period of regulatory data protection for biologics. American companies have sought the same standards from trading partners.

With new agreements in the WTO largely stalled, the focus of trade negotiations over the last decade has shifted to bilateral and regional trade agreements where provisions are often more detailed and tailored. In negotiations toward the Transpacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), the United States pushed for 12 years, but agreed to eight years for biologics from the date of first marketing approval and allowed flexibility in how data protections could be administered. When the United States withdrew from the TPP, the remaining members suspended the relevant provisions.

In the USMCA, American biopharmaceuticals again did not get everything they wanted. Canada and Mexico do not have to match the United States in providing 12 years but agreed to increase the duration of data protection to 10 years from the current standard of five years in Mexico and eight years in Canada.

10 years in USMCA

Why Push Trading Partners to Increase Data Protections?

Beyond North America, the so-called “pharmerging” markets (generally the large developing countries) are growing faster than the stable developed markets. China is by far the largest emerging market for pharmaceuticals. In many developing countries, patent systems are weak or poorly enforced. Regulatory data protection provides some buffer against IP exposure, making it viable and more attractive for companies to introduce their products in that market.

Less data protection and lack of enforcement diminish the potential for U.S. exports. It also leaves the door open for competitors to access unprotected U.S. data without the originator’s authorization. Trade agreement obligations help guard against the unfair commercial use of proprietary data and expand the degree of IP protections in global markets, which is a precursor to greater diffusion of innovative drugs to patients worldwide.

Back to the Core Concerns – Availability and Costs to Patients

Critics of USMCA’s provisions argue data protections keep the prices of biologics high by delaying the introduction of biosimilars. The first biosimilar product was approved in the U.S. market in March 2015. By March 2019, 18 had been approved. Many experts suggest biosimilars have lagged in the U.S. market due to slower changes to the U.S. regulatory system and patent litigation as the industry goes through the same growing pains it did with generic regulation.

As well, drug development is an inherently expensive and risky business, characterized by high failure rates. On average, the process of discovery and commercialization takes 10-15 years at a cost of $2.6 billion. Less than 12 percent of drug candidates make it all the way from lab to patient.

Because of the complexity and high fixed costs required to develop the capacity to manufacture biosimilars, it takes eight to 10 years for biosimilars to come to market, there are fewer entrants than is the case with generics, and the cost savings realized are 10 to 30 percent off the brand, versus an average of 80 percent achievable by generics. Considering the length of time normally required to achieve safe and reliable production of biosimilars, the data protection period in USMCA is unlikely to be a cause of undue delay in getting them to market. Data protection terms are also often less than the remaining patent term.

Your Loss is My Gain

The prominent healthcare research firm, IQVIA, forecasts the biopharmaceutical industry stands to lose $121 billion between 2019 and 2023 as periods of market exclusivity end. Eighty percent of that impact, or loss for innovators, will be in the U.S. market as nearly all of the top branded drugs will have generic or biosimilar competition.

IQVIA says competition among biosimilars is on a path to grow three-times larger in 2023 than it is today. If that’s so, savings over branded biologics could produce approximately $160 billion in lower spending just over the next five years, even as overall spending on biologic drugs grows.

This is part of the business cycle of the pharmaceutical industry and why the innovators maintain strong pipelines because they have limited exclusive time in the market before competitors arrive. That’s good for patients. The data protections in USMCA are not likely to materially impact this cycle or spending. When Canada and Japan lengthened their duration of data protection, drug spending as a percentage of GDP remained nearly flat.

ME losses

Reason for Optimism

Biologics are called the drug of tomorrow. They comprise nearly 70 percent of the innovation pipeline which includes some 4,500 drugs in development in the United States and another 8,000 globally.

Breakthrough products are expected for cancer treatments, autism and diabetes. This is great news, but specialty and niche products tend to come at a higher price so spending may increase as these new drugs enter the market. According to IQVIA, average spending on the brand versions will nonetheless decline from 8.2 percent of the U.S. market to 6.7 percent, a demonstration there’s a healthy market for originals and copies.

There would be no copies without the originals, which is why pharmaceutical regulatory and legal frameworks are full of public policy trade-offs to strike a balance that will support return on innovation while not impeding the availability of affordable drugs. As we make scientific progress, the systems that include IP protections must evolve to accommodate new types of drugs, new capabilities in data analytics and clinical practices, and even changing business models. Not doing so can imperil the pace of progress at precisely the moment when breakthroughs are on the horizon.

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Andrea Durkin is the Editor-in-Chief of TradeVistas and Founder of Sparkplug, LLC. Ms. Durkin previously served as a U.S. Government trade negotiator and has proudly taught international trade policy and negotiations for the last fourteen years as an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Master of Science in Foreign Service program.

This article originally appeared on TradeVistas.org. Republished with permission.