Business as usual? An exploration of export fruit production patterns in Mexico in the Trump era

Abstract

Mexico’s trade dependence on the United States and the volatility introduced by the second Trump administration, with its repeated tariff threats, shape a new environment of risk and uncertainty for the Mexican agri-food sector. This work is a first approach to understanding whether these commercial policy statements, often described as “erratic,” had an impact on the production decisions of Mexican export-oriented farmers, specifically in the fruit sector. The study questions whether producers modified the area allocated to crops or if they shifted to others less exposed to tariff volatility, considering the premise that the incorporation of risk is a standard practice in agricultural planning. This work is an initial exploration to understand the Mexican agricultural landscape in what is shaping up to be a new era. Using SIAP data for harvests of avocado, berries, lime, and mango, relevant variables from 2015 to 2024 were analyzed. The results confirm the structural duality of the Mexican agricultural sector: stable growth in avocado, dynamism and high volatility in berries, and moderate stability in lime and mango. The Student’s t-test analysis showed significant fluctuations in the data. Elasticity coefficients revealed extreme volatility in some crops. The regression model, although preliminary, identified a negative and statistically significant correlation between the “Trump factor” and the planted area of mango and lime, and a positive and significant correlation with berries. These findings suggest that commercial threats, despite not consistently materializing (the “Trump Always Chickens Out” phenomenon), did act as a powerful disincentive and generated incentives for productive reconfiguration. The work concludes that declarative commercial policy can have real short-term effects on the political economy of the primary sector.