Winter strawberries from Mexico are being sold below fair value, Commerce says, and the exporter with the highest rate is the one that asked for the deposits to run longer

Every carton of Mexican winter strawberries crossing the border from Friday carries a cash deposit with it.

Commerce preliminarily determines that winter strawberries from Mexico are being, or are likely to be, sold in the United States at less than fair value. The notice was signed on 18 August by Christopher Abbott, the deputy assistant secretary performing the duties of the assistant secretary for enforcement and compliance, and is scheduled to publish on 21 August. Case number A-201-869. The period examined runs from 1 November 2024 to 31 March 2025.

Two Mexican companies were examined individually. Driscoll's Operaciones S.A. de C.V. comes out at an estimated weighted average dumping margin of 5.28 percent and Mainland Farms S.A. de C.V. at 3.37 percent. Everyone else gets 4.83 percent.

Where the all-others rate comes from

That third number is not a judgment about anybody. Sections 733(d)(1)(ii) and 735(c)(5)(A) of the Tariff Act tell Commerce to build a rate for the unexamined tier out of the examined margins, discarding any that are zero, de minimis, or based entirely on facts otherwise available. Neither of these two was, so both count. The notice explains that the department normally works out three versions, a straight weighted average, a simple average, and a weighted average using each company's publicly ranged United States sales values, and then picks whichever of the second two lands closest to the first. Here it used the publicly ranged figures, and 4.83 percent is what fell out.

The request that came in the day before

The turn in this notice is at the back. On 17 August, one day before the determination was signed, Driscoll's asked Commerce to postpone the final determination and to extend provisional measures to a period not longer than six months.

Those two requests travel together by rule. Section 351.210(e)(2) of Commerce's regulations requires that an exporter asking for the final determination to be pushed back must also ask for provisional measures to be stretched from four months to no more than six. So the company facing the higher of the two deposit rates has, in the same letter, extended the window in which that deposit is collected. The notice records the request and gives no reason for it, and none is supplied here.

Commerce granted it on three findings: the preliminary determination is affirmative, the requesting exporter accounts for a significant proportion of exports of the merchandise, and no compelling reasons for denial exist. The final determination now falls no later than 135 days after this one publishes.

Two smaller things in the same document

The scope has changed slightly. Commerce is preliminarily removing the words "harvested or" from the first paragraph of the product description it published when the investigation was initiated in February. A final scope decision issues with the final determination.

And nothing is settled. Commerce says it intends to verify the information it relied on before deciding anything finally, case briefs are not due until a week after the last verification report, and the International Trade Commission has yet to decide whether these imports are injuring or threatening to injure the domestic industry. A dumping margin answers a question about prices. The injury question is a separate vote at a separate agency.