Plant Protection Products
The Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service reports that Turkey has published a new regulation setting the rules and procedures for licensing plant protection products (pesticides, bio-pesticides, biological control agents, biotechnical control products, and plant growth regulators and activators) and placing them on the Turkish market. Under these regulations a foreign competent authority (which in the U.S. includes chambers of commerce and state departments of agriculture) must issue and sign a manufacturer certificate for exports of such products to Turkey. These certificates must comply with the template specified here and no other format is allowed.
Rice
FAS reports that Costa Rica has reinstated 35 percent tariffs on imports of non-U.S.-origin rice, “instantly boosting U.S. rice competitiveness through preferential access negotiated in the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement.” FAS states that in 2024 CAFTA-DR duty-free quotas for U.S. rice are 69,000 metric tons for rough rice and 9,750 MT for milled rice, but that in 2025 all U.S. rice will enter Costa Rica duty-free, quota-free, and exempt from the one percent import tax charged to other imports.
Avocados
In an April 18 letter more than two dozen organizations urged the State Department to halt imports of avocados linked to recent deforestation in Mexico, most of which the letter says is happening illegally. Mexico supplies almost 90 percent of avocados sold in the U.S. the letter states, but “many Mexican growers have created legal, long-standing avocado farms that could continue to supply the United States if avocados from recently deforested lands are banned.”
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