Guacamole has been spared from tariffs for now. But salsa may not be so lucky.
While President Donald Trump put threatened tariffs on Mexican avocados on pause, the U.S. government plans to put a nearly 21% duty on fresh Mexican tomatoes starting July 14. A duty — like a tariff — is a tax on imports, and this one would impact the 4 billion pounds of tomatoes the U.S. imports from Mexico each year.
Proponents say the import tax will help rebuild the shrinking U.S. tomato industry and ensure the produce eaten in the U.S. is also grown there. Mexico currently supplies around 70% of U.S. tomato market, up from 30% two decades ago, according to the Florida Tomato Exchange.
“Unless we even the playing field in terms of fair pricing, you’re not going to have a domestic industry for fresh tomatoes in the very near future,” Robert Guenther, the trade group's executive vice president, said. Florida and California are the top U.S. producers of tomatoes, but most of California’s crop is turned into sauces and other products.
Opponents say the duty will make fresh tomatoes more expensive for U.S. buyers. NatureSweet, a San Antonio-based company that grows tomatoes in Mexico as well as the U.S., said it will be paying millions of dollars each month in duties if the decision isn’t reversed.
“We will look for ways to adapt or streamline our operations, but the truth is, we are always doing that so we run an efficient business already,” said Skip Hulett, NatureSweet’s chief legal officer. “Produce is not a large-margin business. We’re determining what portion of the cost we could absorb, but these added costs will most certainly need to be passed on to the consumer.”
Tim Richards, a professor at the Morrison School of Agribusiness at Arizona State University, expects U.S. retail prices for tomatoes to rise by around 10.5% if the duty goes through.
Mexico’s government said last month it was convinced it could negotiate over the issue. But if the tomato tax takes effect, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has hinted her country may impose duties on chicken and pork legs imported from the U.S.
The tug-of-war over tomatoes has a long history. In 1996, shortly after the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect, the U.S. Department of Commerce investigated allegations that Mexico was exporting tomatoes to the U.S. at artificially low prices, a practice known as dumping.
The U.S. government agreed to suspend the investigation if Mexico met certain rules, including selling its tomatoes at a minimum price. Since then, the agreement has been subject to periodic reviews, but the two sides always reached an agreement that avoided duties.
But last month, the Commerce Department announced its withdrawal from the latest agreement, saying it had been “flooded with comments” from U.S. tomato growers who want better protection from Mexican imports.
Guenther, of the Florida Tomato Exchange, said even though Mexican exporters are required to charge a minimum price, shipments are only spot-checked, so exporters can get around that. But more generally, Mexico hurts the U.S. industry because it costs 40% to 50% less to grow tomatoes there, Guenther said. Land is cheaper, labor is cheaper and inputs like seeds and fertilizer cost less, he said.
Tomatoes are a labor-intensive crop, Guenther said, and the U.S. industry typically relies on immigrant workers through the H-2A visa program. That program required farmers to pay workers an average of $16.98 per hour last year, an amount that has jumped as labor has become harder to find. Richards estimates that workers on Mexican tomato farms earn about one-tenth that rate.
NatureSweet acknowledges that it’s more cost-effective to grow tomatoes in Mexico, but says climate is one of the biggest reasons. The company’s Mexican greenhouses don’t need lighting, heating or cooling systems because of the year-round weather conditions.
“You can relocate some industries, but you can’t relocate climate agriculture,” Hulett said.
Lance Jungmeyer, the president of the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas, which represents importers of Mexican tomatoes, said Florida doesn’t produce the vine-ripened tomatoes that U.S. consumers increasingly favor. Florida tomatoes are picked when they’re green and shipped to warehouses to ripen, he said.
“Florida doesn’t grow the kinds of specialty tomatoes that have taken off, but they want to get protection,” Jungmeyer said. “Their market share is dropping for reasons of their own choice.”
Guenther disagrees. “If you put a Florida tomato up against a Mexican tomato, I think it would do very well in taste test,” he said.
Adrian Burciaga, co-owner of Don Artemio, an upscale Mexican restaurant in Fort Worth, Texas, wouldn’t want to switch to a U.S. producer. He compares it to fine wine; if he wants a good cabernet sauvignon, he gets it from Napa, California. If he wants a good tomato that reminds him of his childhood, he gets it from Mexico.
“We know the flavors they are going to bring to the salsas and moles. We don’t want to compromise flavors,” Burciaga said.
Burciaga said his restaurant uses 300 to 400 pounds of Roma tomatoes from Mexico every week. He currently pays $19 for a 25-pound crate of tomatoes. He doesn’t relish paying the additional cost, but he feels he has no choice.
Burciaga said the tomato duty — and the threat of Trump implementing the paused 25% tariff on many other products from Mexico — are making it difficult to run his business.
“The uncertainty part concerns us. A small or medium restaurant budgets things out. We know in advance that in six months things will increase, so we’re able to adjust,” he said. “But we don’t know these things in advance. How do you plan and how do you react?”
AP Reporter Maria Verza in Mexico City contributed.
FILE - Tomatoes imported from Mexico are for sale in a supermarket in Miami as the United States imposed 25% tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico, starting a trade war with its closest neighbors and allies Wednesday, Mar. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)
FILE - Tomatoes imported from Mexico are for sale in a supermarket in Miami as the United States imposed 25% tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico, starting a trade war with its closest neighbors and allies Wednesday, March 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)
President Donald Trump is in Michigan to promote his efforts to boost U.S. manufacturing, as he tries to counter fears about a weakening job market and worries that still-rising prices are taking a toll on Americans’ pocketbooks. The day trip includes a tour of a Ford factory in Dearborn that makes best-selling F-150 pickups, and an address to the Detroit Economic Club.
It comes as the Trump administration’s criminal investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has sparked an outcry, with defenders of the U.S. central bank pushing back against Trump’s efforts to exert more control over it. Federal data from December released before the president left Washington showed Inflation declined a bit last month as prices for gas and used cars fell — a sign that cost pressures are slowly easing.
In their wake of off-year election losses for the GOP, the White House said Trump would put a greater emphasis on talking directly to the public about his economic policies after doing relatively few events around the country earlier in his term.
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The president opened with introductions and a few jokes, then immediately shifted to talking about his elections and voter ID laws, instead of the economy.
He then resumed recognizing some of the more notable people in the audience in Detroit.
The president stopped to speak to reporters while touring the auto factory and was indifferent to the idea of renegotiating the United States-Mexico-Canada trade pact, or USMCA, which is up for review this year.
“I think they want it,” he said of the other nations. “I don’t really care.”
Trump said the U.S. doesn’t need cars made in Canada or Mexico, but he wants to see them made in the U.S.
Beijing on Tuesday criticized President Donald Trump’s plan to impose an additional 25% tariff on Iran’s trading partners, which includes China, Iran’s largest trading partner.
“Tariff wars have no winners,” said Mao Ning, a spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry. “China will firmly protect its legitimate and lawful rights and interests.”
It’s not immediately clear if the tariff on Chinese goods will go up, because the two governments have agreed to a yearlong truce in their trade war following a summit between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in October in South Korea.
On Tuesday, the Chinese commerce ministry extended anti-dumping tariffs on U.S. solar polysilicon imports. The rates are 53.3% to 57%.
U.S. Health Secretary has added two more members to his controversial vaccine advisory panel.
Dr. Kimberly Biss and Dr. Adam Urato on Tuesday were named to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The committee recommends how vaccines should be used.
Kennedy — a leading antivaccine activist before becoming the nation’s top health official — last year fired all 17 of the panel’s previous members, replacing them now with 13 that includes several anti-vaccine voices.
Biss, based in Florida, has urged pregnant women not to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Urato, based in Massachusetts, has warned about medications taken during pregnancy — particularly antidepressants.
The Clintons, in a letter released on social media, are slamming a subpoena for their testimony as “legally invalid” even as Republican lawmakers prepared contempt of Congress proceedings against them.
The Clintons wrote that the chair of the House Oversight Committee, Republican Rep. James Comer, is on the cusp of a process “literally designed to result in our imprisonment” and vowed to “forcefully defend” ourselves.
After Bill Clinton failed to show up for scheduled deposition Tuesday morning, Comer says he will being contempt of Congress proceedings next week. That would start a complicated and politically messy process that Congress has rarely reached for and could result in prosecution from the Justice Department.
The change means EPA rules for fine particulate matter and ozone will focus only on the cost to industry.
It’s part of a broader realignment under Trump toward a business-friendly approach that has included the rollback of multiple policies meant to safeguard human health and the environment and slow climate change.
The agency said in a statement that it “absolutely remains committed to our core mission of protecting human health and the environment” but “will not be monetizing the impacts at this time.”
Environmental and public health advocates called the action a dangerous abdication of one of EPA’s core missions, to protect public health. They said the change could lead to more asthma attacks, heart disease and premature deaths.
Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican who has been outspoken against the Trump administration’s overseas military pursuits, said an attack on Iran would likely harm U.S. interests and could backfire.
“I hope they are able to rise up in sufficient force to actually topple the regime,” he said about the Iranian people protesting.
“But once we start dropping bombs on their government, I mean, it can create the opposite of the intended effect, because when people — no matter who they are, whether they’re pro or against the regime — tend to be unhappy when foreign bombs are dropping on them.”
“Temporary means temporary,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement to The Associated Press.
DHS told Fox News separately that Somalis with Temporary Protected Status must leave the U.S. by March 17, when existing protections expire. The TPS move comes amid Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, where many Somalis have U.S. citizenship. Trump has targeted Somali immigrants with racist rhetoric and accused them of defrauding federal programs.
A congressional report last year estimated the Somali TPS population at 705 people. Noem insisted that circumstances in Somalia “have improved to the point that it no longer meets the law’s requirement for Temporary Protected Status.”
Located in the horn of Africa, Somalia is one of the world’s poorest nations and has for decades been beset by chronic strife and insecurity exacerbated by multiple natural disasters, including severe droughts.
A bill introduced by Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts would allow people to sue federal law enforcement officers for civil rights violations and remove their qualified immunity protections in such cases.
“When masked ICE agents are allowed to kill and harm people with impunity, we have crossed a dangerous threshold in our nation,” Markey said in a statement.
The bill “sends a powerful message to everyone in America — citizen or not — that when ICE agents break the law, they should and will be held accountable” Pressley said.
The bill stands little chance of passage in the GOP-controlled Congress.
Qualified immunity protects government agents from lawsuits unless they violate “clearly established” constitutional or statutory protections. Debates over the scope of the legal doctrine have held up bipartisan negotiations over policing reforms.
The Democratic National Committee will spend millions of dollars to cement control of voter registration efforts that have traditionally been entrusted to nonprofit advocacy groups and individual political campaigns. Party leaders hope the shift will increase their chances this year and cement successes for many elections to come.
The initiative being announced on Tuesday in Arizona and Nevada could become the DNC’s largest-ever push to sign up new voters. The focus is on young people, voters of color and people without college educations — demographics that drifted away from Democrats in the last presidential race, which returned Trump to the White House.
“It’s a crisis. And for our party to actually win elections, we have to actually create more Democrats,” DNC Chair Ken Martin said in an interview with The Associated Press. Party leaders want a more explicitly partisan approach like the one used by Republicans, who have relied less on outside groups to register and mobilize their voter base.
Trump said Tuesday he’s canceled talks with Iranian officials amid their protest crackdown and promised help to protesters in the country after human rights monitors said Tuesday that the death toll spiked to 2,000.
Trump did not offer any details about what the help would entail, but it comes after Trump said Iran wants to negotiate with Washington after his threat to strike the Islamic Republic. Trump’s latest message on social media appeared to make an abrupt shift about his willingness to engage with the Iranian government.
“Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING - TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!” Trump wrote in morning post on Truth Socia. “Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price. I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”
The Danish government official who confirmed the support on Tuesday was not authorized to comment publicly on the sensitive matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The official didn’t provide details about the support, which comes at a moment of tension between the NATO allies as Trump repeatedly calls for the U.S. to take over Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are set to meet Wednesday in Washington with Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and his Greenlandic counterpart Vivian Motzfeldt to discuss the matter.
Officials with Denmark and Greenland have repeatedly said the island is not for sale and expressed frustration that Trump isn’t ruling out military force to take the territory.
The White House and Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Danish support for the U.S. operation was first reported by Newsmax.
— By Aamer Madhani
In a social media post, Trump defended the aggressive immigration enforcement actions being carried out across Minneapolis as part of his deportation agenda.
Throngs of people have taken to the streets of Minneapolis to protest the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers after a woman was shot and killed during an operation last Wednesday.
The president asserted in the post that the anti-ICE activity is also shifting the spotlight away from alleged fraud in the state and said, “FEAR NOT, GREAT PEOPLE OF MINNESOTA, THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!”
Trump blames what he calls “professional agitators” for the protests. He has not provided evidence to support his claims.
“Michiganders are feeling the effects of Trump’s economy every day,” Michigan Democratic Party chair Curtis Hertel said in a statement, singling out Republican opposition to extending health care subsidies.
“After spending months claiming that affordability was a ‘hoax’ and creating a health care crisis for Michiganders, Donald Trump is now coming to Detroit — a city he hates — to tout his billionaire-first agenda while working families suffer,” Hertel said.
It won’t be easy for Big Tech companies to win the hearts and minds of Americans who are angry about massive artificial intelligence data centers sprouting up in their neighborhoods, straining electricity grids and drawing on local reservoirs.
Microsoft is trying anyway. The software giant’s president, Brad Smith, is meeting with federal lawmakers Tuesday, pushing for the industry, not taxpayers, to pay the full costs of the vast network of computing warehouses needed to power AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s own Copilot. Trump gave the effort a nod with a Truth Social post saying he doesn’t want Americans to “pick up the tab” for data centers and pay higher utility costs.
“Local communities naturally want to see new jobs but not at the expense of higher electricity prices or the diversion of their water,” Smith said in an interview with The Associated Press.
▶ Read more from the AP’s interview with Microsoft’s president
Central bankers from around the world said Tuesday they “stand in full solidarity” with U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, after Trump dramatically escalated his confrontation with the Fed with the Justice Department investigating and threatening criminal charges.
Powell “has served with integrity, focused on his mandate and an unwavering commitment to the public interest,” read the statement signed by nine national central bank heads including European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde and Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey.
They added that “the independence of central banks is a cornerstone of price, financial and economic stability in the interest of the citizens that we serve. It is therefore critical to preserve that independence, with full respect for the rule of law and democratic accountability.”
▶ Read more about the central bankers supporting Federal Reserve independence
Inflation declined a bit last month as prices for gas and used cars fell, a sign that cost pressures are slowly easing.
Consumer prices rose 0.3% in December from the prior month, the Labor Department said Tuesday, the same as in November. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices rose 0.2%, also matching November’s figure.
Even as inflation has eased, the large price increases for necessities such as groceries, rent, and health care have left many American households feeling squeezed, turning “affordability” issues into high-profile political concerns.
▶ Read more about the latest data on U.S. consumer prices
Trump’s administration has made good on its pledge to label the Lebanese, Jordanian and Egyptian chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations, imposing sanctions on them and their members. The decision could please the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, but complicate U.S. relations with allies Qatar and Turkey.
The State Department designated the Lebanese branch a foreign terrorist organization, the most severe of the labels, which makes it a criminal offense to provide material support to the group. Treasury listed the Jordanian and Egyptian branches as specially designated global terrorists for providing support to Hamas.
Nathan Brown, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, said the sanctions may impact visa and asylum claims for people entering not just the U.S. but also Western European countries and Canada.
▶ Read more about the terrorist designations
The Supreme Court is hearing arguments Tuesday over state laws barring transgender girls and women from playing on school athletic teams. Lower courts ruled for the transgender athletes in Idaho and West Virginia who challenged the state bans, but the conservative-dominated Supreme Court might not follow suit.
In just the past year, the justices ruled in favor of state bans on gender-affirming care for transgender youths and allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced.
The legal fight is playing out amid a broad effort by Trump to target transgender Americans, beginning on the first day of his second term and including the ouster of transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok will join Google’s generative AI engine in operating inside the Pentagon network, as part of a broader push to feed as much of the military’s data as possible into the developing technology.
“Very soon we will have the world’s leading AI models on every unclassified and classified network throughout our department,” Hegseth said in a speech at Musk’s space flight company, SpaceX, in South Texas.
The announcement comes just days after Grok — which is embedded into X, the social media network owned by Musk — drew global outcry and scrutiny for generating highly sexualized deepfake images of people without their consent.
Malaysia and Indonesia have blocked Grok, while the U.K.’s independent online safety watchdog announced an investigation Monday. Grok has limited image generation and editing to paying users.
Hegseth said Grok will go live inside the Defense Department later this month and announced that he would “make all appropriate data” from the military’s IT systems available for “AI exploitation.” He also said data from intelligence databases would be fed into AI systems.
▶ Read more about Grok’s new role in the Defense Department
Trump has arrived at a delicate moment as he weighs whether to order a U.S. military response against the Iranian government as it continues a violent crackdown on protests.
He has repeatedly threatened Tehran with military action if his administration found the Islamic Republic was using deadly force against antigovernment protesters. It’s a red line that Trump has said he believes Iran is “starting to cross” and has left him and his national security team weighing “very strong options.”
But the U.S. military — which Trump has warned Tehran is “locked and loaded” — appears, at least for the moment, to have been placed on standby mode as Trump ponders next steps, saying that Iranian officials want to have talks with the White House.
Trump announced Monday on social media that he would slap 25% tariffs on countries doing business with Tehran “effective immediately” — his first action aimed at penalizing Iran for the protest crackdown, and his latest example of using tariffs as a tool to force friends and foes on the global stage to bend to his will.
▶ Read more about Trump and Iran
The BBC plans to ask a court to throw out U.S. President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the British broadcaster, court papers show.
Trump filed a lawsuit in December over the way the BBC edited a speech he gave on Jan. 6, 2021. The claim, filed in a Florida federal court, seeks $5 billion in damages for defamation and $5 billion for unfair trade practices.
The broadcaster has apologized to Trump over the edit of the Jan. 6 speech. But the publicly funded BBC rejects claims it defamed him. The furor triggered the resignations of the BBC’s top executive and its head of news.
Papers filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Miami say the BBC will file a motion to dismiss the case on March 17 on the basis that the court lacks jurisdiction and Trump failed to state a claim.
The broadcaster’s lawyers will argue that the BBC did not create, produce or broadcast the documentary in Florida and that Trump’s claim the documentary was available in the U.S. on streaming service BritBox is not true.
▶ Read more about the lawsuit
Trump will travel to Michigan on Tuesday to promote his efforts to boost U.S. manufacturing, trying to counter fears about a weakening job market and worries that still-rising prices are taking a toll on Americans’ pocketbooks.
The day trip will include a tour of a Ford factory in Dearborn that makes F-150 pickups, the bestselling domestic vehicle in the U.S. The Republican president is also set to address the Detroit Economic Club at the MotorCity Casino.
November’s off-year elections showed a shift away from Republicans as public concerns about kitchen table issues persist. In their wake, the White House said Trump would put a greater emphasis on talking directly to the public about his economic policies after doing relatively few events around the country earlier in his term.
Trump’s Michigan swing follows economy-focused speeches he gave last month in Pennsylvania — where his gripes about immigrants arriving to the U.S. from “filthy” countries got more attention than his pledges to fight inflation — and North Carolina, where he insisted his tariffs have spurred the economy, despite residents noting the squeeze of higher prices.
▶ Read more about Trump’s trip to Michigan
FILE - Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, right, and President Donald Trump look over a document of cost figures during a visit to the Federal Reserve, July 24, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)
A visitor stops to look at a photograph of President Donald Trump and a short plaque next to it are on display at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery's "American Presidents" exhibit on Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026 in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)
