06/17/05 Apple tariffs off for now, Part two

The good news is late last month the Mexican government agreed to allow U.S. Red and Golden Delicious apples back into their country duty free. But how long the duty free status remains is pending the outcome of the restarted investigation into dumping charges against the U.S. And a final determination, expected within three to four months, could mean either a duty free state or perhaps on the other extreme, tariffs greater than the previous rate of almost forty-seven per cent. Jim Archer of Northwest Fruit Exporters says the key will be information from exporters. ARCHER: It will probably be a process of asking for additional information of the exporters and eventually the Ministry will come to a final determination with a final duty rate. That is not as easy as it sounds. The current investigation centers on information from the original one, which occurred during a six month period in 1996. ARCHER: It's so old that many of the exporters probably are going to have trouble locating all their sales data and giving a complete response to that questionnaire and they do have a tight deadline to respond to that, it's thirty working days. It's not all good news, but it does help in the short term to move out the rest of the inventory. And indeed such a break was needed for carryover from the 2004 crop, a large one by recent accounts. More on movements of this past year's crop is discussed in our next program.