The potato-shaped loophole in free trade

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 3 January 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ever since free trade opened up between the US and Mexico in the 1990s, trillions of dollars of goods have been going back and forth between the two countries, from cars to strawberries to MRI machines to underwear. But one major exception has been fresh American potatoes.

Today on the show, we tell the trade saga of the American potato. For more than 25 years, there was a place that American potatoes could not go to freely. A place that the entire American potato industry was desperate to access. A vast, untapped market: Mexico.

But standing in their way – the Mexican potato lobby and a trade loophole.

This episode was hosted by Erika Beras and Jeff Guo. It was produced by Willa Rubin and edited by Meg Cramer. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Engineering by Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This message comes from Money for Couples, a new book and podcast that help you and your partner build and share financial vision.
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0:13.1	Start your financial future today.
0:15.4	Search Money for Couples wherever you listen.
0:19.2	This is Planet Money from NPR.
0:26.1	Oh, we're going in.
0:28.5	A few weeks ago, we walked into this structure.
0:32.4	Here we are.
0:33.1	It was like three stories tall, the size of an airplane hanger,
0:36.8	and it was filled with potatoes.
0:40.3	From end to end, piled 18 feet high, 15 million potatoes.
0:45.6	Oh my goodness.
0:47.3	Oh, be careful.
0:48.2	It's a little muddy here.
0:49.2	Oh, my goodness.
0:50.4	This is literally a mountain.
0:52.3	It's a wall of potato.
0:53.9	We're at this wall of potato to learn about what
0:57.5	happens after a trade deal is signed. In this case, it's this wild saga that's been playing out
1:03.9	over the past quarter century. All these potatoes belong to Brian Wada. He's a third-generation potato farmer in Pingree, Idaho.
1:13.4	And we were inside one of his giant climate-controlled potato warehouses.
1:18.6	Can we climb this ladder?
	...

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