President Trump’s promise of mass deportations, and his immigration-related proposal to set tariffs on Mexico and Canada, will lead to major economic disruption. As Americans celebrate this weekend they should know: Trump’s actions will raise costs – including on Americans’ Super Bowl party staples.
By the time Super Bowl LX comes around, the foods we import from Mexico, like avocados and tomatoes, could be subject to Trump’s 25% tariffs. And if mass deportations are carried out and farm workers are deported, the food grown in the United States will cost more. As a result of President Trump’s extreme anti-immigration policies, beer, chips, salsa, guacamole will all be more expensive.
See how the prices of some of your favorite Super Bowl staples will increase under Donald Trump’s plans:
- Salsa: Tomatoes and onions are among the most common foods imported from Mexico and would be subject to tariffs under Trump’s plan. Furthermore, domestic growers like those in California – which produced $1.4 Billion worth of tomatoes in 2022 – could see their workforce devastated by Trump’s immigration raids.
- Beer: In just the first six months of 2024, the United States imported $3.2 billion worth of beer from Mexico, and the best-selling beer in the United States – Modelo Especial – is brewed south of the border.
- Nachos: The most recent statistics from the California Department of Agriculture say that the state produced $10 billion worth of dairy products, like cheese, in 2022. Half of California’s agricultural workforce is undocumented, and Trump’s deportation raids could place a strain on the state’s dairy industry.
- Guacamole: Studies indicate that 95% of the avocados imported ahead of the Super Bowl are imported from Mexico and would be subject to 25% tariffs under Trump’s plan.
- Crawfish: Core to the sense of identity in Louisiana, the host of Super Bowl LIX, most workers in the crawfish industry are immigrants, and losing them would “devastate” the industry.
BACKGROUND:
Trump’s tariffs will raise costs on goods imported from Mexico, including popular Super Bowl party staples like avocados and beer:
- Earlier this month, Donald Trump imposed a 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico. Days later, he paused the tariffs for 30 days.
- USDA: “In 2023, Mexico supplied 63 percent of U.S. vegetable imports and 47 percent of U.S. fruit and nut imports.”
- Austin American-Statesman: The following common imports from Mexico could see price increases if tariffs are implemented:
- Cereals
- Tropical fruits
- Tomatoes
- Onions
- Lettuce
- Cabbage
- Fruit Juice
- Beer
- Liquor
- PR Newswire: Up to 95% of avocados sold in advance of the Super Bowl are imported from Mexico.
- Mexico Business News: “From January to June 2024, the United States imported US$3.8 billion worth of beer, with Mexican shipments accounting for US$3.2 billion. Beer remains the top agricultural export from Mexico to the United States, solidifying its position as the world’s leading beer exporter.”
Immigration raids in farm country could impact America’s growers since nearly 70% of farm workers are immigrants.
- USDA Economic Research Service: Immigrant farmworkers make up an estimated 68 percent of agriculture workers in the United States, and roughly 42 percent of those workers lack legal status.
- Stateline: “Agricultural industries such as meatpacking, dairy farms and poultry and livestock farms also rely heavily on immigrants. ‘We have five to six employees that do the work that nobody else will do. We wouldn’t survive without them,’ said Bruce Lampman, who owns Lampman Dairy Farm, in Bruneau, Idaho. His farm, which has been in the family three decades, has 350 cows producing some 26,000 pounds of milk a day. ‘My business and every agriculture business in the U.S. will be crippled if they want to get rid of everybody who does the work,’ said Lampman, adding that his workers are worried about what’s to come.”
- Super Bowl host Louisiana’s flagship products are threatened by immigration crackdowns:
- New Orleans Times-Picayune: “Crawfish are core to Louisiana’s sense of identity, ubiquitous at festivals and restaurants across the state. Commercial farmers produce some 120 million pounds of the small crustaceans annually, pumping about $300 million into the state’s economy. Most people who power that industry come from Mexico and Central America as H-2A and H-2B visa workers — bureaucratic federal programs that grant seasonal ‘guest worker’ status to a capped number of foreign citizens annually. Those workers are vital to Louisiana crawfish farmers’ livelihoods. Losing them would ‘devastate’ the industry, said Dr. Mike Strain, the state’s agriculture and forestry commissioner. Strain said that when farmers can’t hire enough guest workers, they resort to shipping their haul to Mexico to have crawfish meat processed there before sending it back stateside.”
- New Orleans Times-Picayune: “It’s not just undocumented people who could face immigration enforcement under Trump. Some of Louisiana’s flagship products — Acadiana crawfish, Ponchatoula strawberries, River Parishes sugarcane — are harvested by migrant workers hired seasonally through the H-2A and H-2B federal visa programs, which immigration lawyers view as a potential target of Trump’s agenda.”
- California grows half of America’s fruits and vegetables, and half of their farmworkers are undocumented immigrants.
- Los Angeles Times: “Trump has pledged to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants across the country, including, he has said in recent days, rounding up people and putting them in newly built detention camps. If any such effort penetrated California’s heartland — where half the fruits and vegetables consumed in the U.S. are grown — it almost surely would decimate the workforce that farmers rely on to plant and harvest their crops.”
- Los Angeles Times: “At least half of the state’s 162,000 farmworkers are undocumented, according to estimates from the federal Department of Labor and research conducted by UC Merced.”
