Walk into a packing house in the Yakima or Wenatchee Valleys and you don’t just see fruit. You hear the rhythm of the regional economy: the roar of the sorting lines and the stacking of boxes destined for ports in Seattle or Tacoma or trucks heading to Canada and Mexico. 

For the orchard families who define this region, "market access" isn't an abstraction. It's the difference between a line of credit that gets renewed and one that doesn't. It's whether the next generation stays to grow our food or gives up and leaves the farm. 

The good news is that the United States is currently in a position of unusual strength, call it the trade policy goal line, to knock those trade barrier walls down. Growers are excited by President Donald Trump’s reciprocal trade initiative and aggressive efforts to achieve fair market access around the world. There are now more than a dozen new frameworks negotiated with others close to completion, an impressive accomplishment. 

Now, we need the Trump administration to use its powerful leverage to finish the job. Converting high-level handshakes into the removal of persistent and prolonged unfair trade barriers to US apples, pears and sweet cherries must be a top priority. These barriers have cost our industry hundreds of millions of dollars in lost sales that we will never get back, no matter how hard we work. 

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Take India, for example. India is a market of immense potential for Washington apples. Yet today, our growers face unfair tariffs of 50% on apples and 30% on pears and sweet cherries – rates that are among the highest in the world. 

Consider Thailand, where U.S. growers face tariffs of 40% on cherries, 30% on pears and 10% on apples. Or Australia, Japan or South Korea where despite our close strategic partnerships and trade agreements, our apple growers cannot even ship their apples. 

Our growers are closer to the goal line of achieving real market access than we have been in decades.  We stand ready to line up behind the administration to support the final “tush push” and take the unprecedented leverage created by the frameworks and push the real market access for our growers over the goal line. This can only happen if apples, sweet cherries and pears remain priority deliverables in these ongoing talks. 

We have already seen success with Cambodia and Malaysia, which agreed to eliminate their tariffs. But high tariffs in India and Thailand, and decades long non-tariff barriers in Australia (China can ship apples to Australia but the U.S. can’t), Japan and South Korea remain, as do barriers in many other framework countries. If trade policy is going to deliver a win for tree fruit growers, it has to show up where it counts – on the invoice. 

Tree fruit growers are grateful for the focus on trade and are ready to supply the world. We are cheering for the final push to deliver wins in support of rural tree fruit communities.

Mark Powers is president of the Northwest Horticultural Council, representing tree fruit growers in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.