The recent ruling of the United States International Trade Commission (USITC, for its acronym in English), which has categorically stated that fresh, frozen, or chilled blueberries imported by the US market do not cause serious harm to local industry, is a very powerful signal for all blueberry producers in the world, in the sense that as long as they maintain fair practices in the market, there is nothing to fear.

This consolidates the global character of the blueberry industry. In the international trade regulation bodies by which we are governed, there are rules, and these are clear, and in this case they have been applied correctly and without appeal, because they are precisely made to prevent a country from arbitrarily or unilaterally establishing barriers. local protectionists to a product freely demanded by its consumers.

An announced Failure

We will draw many lessons from this episode in the future, and experts and analysts will share their conclusions with us. In these pages, from the beginning we announced the inadmissibility of the request of the US producers when requesting the Safeguard, and we predicted in advance that the management was destined to fail.

At the time, we said that there were arguments to sustain that "this threat will not prosper, for political reasons, legal reasons of international trade, and objective arguments easy to verify, so that possibly this episode, as of February 11, will become just a bad memory for the global blueberry industry, ”and it will.

See opinion column here

Collaborative industry

Another of the positive results left by this episode is the creation of the Blueberry Coalition for Progress and Health, which was organized collaboratively between the different players in the blueberry industry to defend the right to produce and market the fruit. in the US, without unjustified restrictions. We hope that this instance is projected in time in the defense and development of the industry in its different projections and scopes.

This is an important moment for the international blueberry industry and there is reason to celebrate. The important thing is to continue correctly within the parameters of free and healthy competition, because if the industry always acts within the framework of good commercial practices, no one should be afraid to abide by the laws of supply and demand, without restrictions .