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The tariff-slashing agreement that revived the flow of Washington’s apples to India is a promising start toward an era of greater trade. Washington’s Congressional leaders should seize the momentum and tenaciously pursue further opportunities to open overseas markets for the state’s goods.
Washington’s produce, particularly the Red Delicious apple, had long found customers in India’s market. Apples alone were an approximately $120 million business in India, the third largest importer of the fruit from Washington. But when President Donald Trump raised tariffs on steel and aluminum in 2019, India retaliated and all but boxed out Washington’s apples with a 20% duty. Millions of dollars in business disappeared, seemingly overnight. That was bad news for the nation’s premier apple growing region, from the Okanagan to the Yakima Valley.
U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, long a champion in advocating for overseas markets for Washington goods, took up the cause. She traveled to India in February 2023 and, in a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, told him of the harms of his country’s tariffs to farmers in her home state. A few months later, the prime minister nixed the duties on U.S. foodstuffs in a state visit at the White House with President Joe Biden.
In the time since, India has imported nearly a million 40-pound boxes of Washington apples — 16 times last season’s entire total — with plenty of time left in this year’s harvest. Other state crops, including chickpeas and lentils, are also boarding containers for the world’s most populous country in far bigger numbers again.
That success coincides, too, with the opening of an Indian Consulate in Seattle, a strengthening of ties in a state where Indians comprise the second largest group of immigrants.
Washington’s boosted apple exports also serve as a reminder of the importance of the upcoming presidential election and Trump’s harmful obsession with one barrier he’s actually successful in building: raising tariffs on other countries. The former president has floated aspirations to erect a 10 percent tax on all imported goods if he wins this fall7. Another Trump term will mean a return to the trade wars of the past, where tariff retaliation between nations will raise prices and prevent Washington’s apples from lucrative export markets.
Let’s go beyond the victory of reducing the Indian tariffs. Washington’s Congressional delegation should fiercely advocate to get more of the state’s products on shelves in countries around the world.
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