Selling Christmas trees to Mexico--it seems like a perfect example of how nations can mutually benefit from trade. Mexico has a lot of people who celebrate Christmas, but not a lot of conifers; the U.S. has a great climate for growing conifers; the shipping distances are not very far; and we’ve got a free trade agreement. Sounds like a great way to bring in some holiday money for U.S. farmers, right?

Whoops--if only things were so simple. As the Heritage Foundation’s blog discusses today, a dispute over our NAFTA obligations has led to punitive tariffs from Mexico:

Try finding a U.S.-grown Christmas tree in Mexico City this week.  They are scarce since Mexico’s usual suppliers of holiday evergreens, growers in the states of California and Oregon, have been priced out of the market by a 20 percent tariff.... The Mexican government levied those tariffs in a completely transparent manner because of U.S. policy to keep a small number of well-inspected Mexican trucks off the U.S. roads and void a deal previously struck under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The dispute centers around a pilot program to allow Mexican trucks--which meet safety and environmental standards--onto U.S. roads, and U.S. trucks onto Mexican roads. This would obviously make it easier for U.S. goods like Christmas trees to make it to buyers in Mexico. But in 2009 Congress, under pressure from unions, voted to defund the program--putting us in violation of NAFTA and leading to Mexican tariffs. You can learn more about the issue from the Alliance to Keep U.S. Jobs.

And the impact goes beyond Christmas trees, covering U.S.-grown agricultural products like almonds, pears, potatoes, wine, pet food, etc. These are opportunities for the U.S. to grow our economy through exports, but we’re missing them. Fixing this needs to be a priority for the administration and new Congress.