President-elect Donald Trump’s threat to levy tariffs as high as 25% on Mexico has left people on both sides of the border concerned about the impact it will have on the consumers, employees and businesses that rely on the Arizona-Mexico trade relationship.
Mexico is Arizona’s single largest trading partner, with imports and exports between the two sides valued at $20 billion annually. Every year billions of dollars worth of agricultural products alone cross the southern border.
Roads between the Mexican state of Sonora and Arizona are regularly packed with semitrucks, many travelling north full of fresh produce on its way to grocery store shelves in the United States.
“This time of year, the vast majority of items are coming from Mexico. Tomatoes, squash, bell peppers, cucumbers. Mexico is supplying most of the country,” said Ben Johnson, president of Portland, Oregon-based Bridges Produce, which imports organic produce from farms in Mexico to sell in grocery stores in the United States.
Johnson said tariffs on Mexico could be devastating for the farmers he works with in the states of Sonora and Sinaloa.
“I mean, growers are going to have to leave crops not harvested, rotting in the fields, because the market will not support the pricing that is needed to pay the tariff,” he said.
Officials in Arizona, including Trump allies, share those concerns about the effect tariffs could have on grocery prices.
“We import a lot of things from Mexico, I mean agriculture products across the board,” said state Rep. Tony Rivero (R-Peoria), who chairs the Arizona House Committee on International Trade. “The last thing you want to see is costs going up for our constituents. Life is tough as it is now.”
Rivero said he hopes Trump is simply using the threat of tariffs to extract concessions from Mexico, citing the President-elect’s own statements saying the tariffs are designed to force Mexico to address issues like illegal immigration and the cross-border drug trade.
“So I'm hoping that cool minds will prevail and that obviously our President negotiates on our behalf,” Rivero said. “But I believe tariffs are not in our interest or Mexico's or Canada's interests.”
But if tariffs aren’t a bluff, there’s a real chance they could strain the Mexico-Arizona trade relationship and result in price increases for consumers — with effects that extend well beyond the price of lettuce or tomatoes at the grocery store.
“If you’re in a sector with pricing power, you can probably pass that along to U.S. consumers,” said Delia Paredes, an economist and wealth adviser in Mexico.

She said industries like auto manufacturing, where much of the production happens in Mexico, would also be forced to increase prices to cover the cost of a tariff.
Trump has argued tariffs will force Mexico to address problems like the flow of fentanyl across the border. And there's some evidence to suggest that Mexico is already working to comply with Trump’s demands. Just a few days after Trump threatened a 25% tariff on Mexico and Canada, Mexican authorities announced the largest fentanyl seizure in the country’s history.
“This is his second time around, so we kind of know his modus operandi," said Paredes. "We start looking for things we can give him in exchange."
Trump has also argued that tariffs on Mexico will level the playing field for American manufacturers and businesses. Chris Camacho, president and CEO of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, said it's not that simple, with many products spending time in both Arizona and Mexico before they reach the customer.
We have numerous companies here and everything from aerospace, even some defense companies and automotive, that produce products in the U.S.Chris Camacho, Greater Phoenix Economic Council
“We have numerous companies here and everything from aerospace, even some defense companies and automotive, that produce products in the U.S,” Camacho said. “They integrate some of those components in Mexico. The Mexican manufacturers then ship that product back to the United States.”
And then there’s the threat of retaliatory tariffs imposed by Mexico against the U.S. imports into the country – an idea already floated by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.
Camacho, who has served on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Investment Advisory Council since 2019, said tariffs in either direction would impact Arizona businesses by disrupting supply chains relied on by many businesses on both sides of the border.
“These supply chains are pretty significantly integrated and everything from aerospace to automobiles,” Camacho said. “This cross-border collaboration is something that has led to economic success for both Mexico and the United States and particularly here in Arizona.”

Only time will determine whether the actions Mexico has taken so far will be enough to placate Trump and avoid a tariff battle.
Stephanie Brewer, a Mexico expert with the human rights group Washington Office on Latin America, said there’s only so much more the country can do to limit the flow of migrants to the border.
“Mexico is already, under the Biden administration, undertaking a massive, really unprecedented level of cracking down and blocking migration,” Brewer said.
Just this month, Mexican authorities bussed around 100 migrants who had set off from the border with Guatemala to the resort city of Acapulco, more than a thousand miles from the border with the United States. Mexico has for years broken up caravans and moved migrants around the country to keep them from even reaching the U.S.-Mexico border in the first place.
That uncertainty has left Trump supporters like Rivero worried about the administration adopting policies that would raise prices for Arizonans months after Trump ran a presidential campaign that blamed Democrats for doing just that by driving up inflation.
I'm a fiscal conservative. The last thing I want to see is prices going up ... [P]eople are struggling, and the last thing we need is tariffs in our relationship between us and Mexico.Rep. Tony Rivero (R-Peoria)
“I'm a fiscal conservative. The last thing I want to see is prices going up,” Rivero said. “Inflation is, I know it's slowing down a bit, but people are struggling, and the last thing we need is tariffs in our relationship between us and Mexico.”
And if American shoppers could no longer afford fresh produce at the grocery store, that would, in turn, harm farmers in Mexico.
Paredes, the economist, hopes it doesn’t come to that.
“A bad outcome for Mexico is also a bad outcome for the U.S. in terms of tariffs and trade,” she said.