Mexico was the largest supplier of U.S. agricultural imports in 2025, accounting for $43.8 billion in goods. The relationship matters across U.S. regions, but import totals do not tell you which U.S. states produced competing crops—or where imported goods ultimately went. Understanding the seasonal mix and the limits of state trade data is essential to reading the numbers accurately.
Why Mexico matters to U.S. agricultural imports
In 2025, the United States imported $43.8 billion in agricultural goods from Mexico, more than from any other country. Canada ranked second at $39.3 billion. Mexico accounted for 20.7 percent of U.S. agricultural imports by value that year. These are reported values for 2025, not forecasts. USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) charts of note reports the figures.
What the United States imports from Mexico
The trade is concentrated in horticultural goods and beverages: vegetables, fruit, beverages, and distilled spirits together made up 70.7 percent of U.S. agricultural imports from Mexico in 2025. Seasonality helps explain the pattern. ERS notes that Mexico grows many kinds of produce during winter that the United States does not grow during that season. Imports can therefore complement domestic production by supplying products outside the U.S. growing season, rather than simply replacing a domestic harvest. ERS’s 2025 trade summary describes the commodity mix and seasonal context.
Why the trade relationship is complementary
U.S. agricultural exports to Mexico have a different mix from Mexican imports into the United States. In 2025, grains, oilseeds, meat, and related products accounted for 74.9 percent of U.S. agricultural exports to Mexico. By contrast, U.S. imports from Mexico were weighted toward vegetables, fruit, beverages, and spirits. Mexico represented 17.9 percent of U.S. agricultural exports by value in 2025. The contrasting commodity mixes show why the two-way relationship is often described as complementary: each side supplies different major product groups. ERS’s 2025 figures report these shares.
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What regional trade statistics can—and cannot—show
A national import total does not identify which U.S. farms or states compete with Mexican producers. Nor does a state associated with an import or export necessarily represent where the agricultural good was grown. USDA ERS describes two distinct state-level data approaches, and they answer different questions.
Production-based state export estimates
The State Exports, Cash Receipts Estimates dataset estimates the value of agricultural production exported from each state. It uses farm cash-receipts data and calibrates estimates to national export totals. This approach aims to attribute export value to production, rather than simply to a shipment point. USDA ERS’s state agricultural trade data page explains the dataset.
State trade by origin and destination
The State Trade by Country of Origin and Destination dataset draws on Census Bureau state trade statistics and reports leading commodities and countries by state and fiscal quarter. It records where commodities are loaded or unloaded for shipment. A state that appears in the statistics—especially for bulk commodities—may therefore be a shipping location, not the place where the product was grown or raised. ERS describes this state trade dataset and its geographic interpretation.
Because the two datasets measure different things, their state figures should not be compared as if they were interchangeable. One estimates the production value attributed to states; the other reflects trade recorded at shipment locations. ERS explicitly distinguishes the approaches.
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How to make a meaningful regional comparison
To assess how imports from Mexico relate to U.S. regional agriculture, define the comparison before interpreting a state ranking or dollar figure:
- Choose the geography: distinguish a producing state or region from a port, border crossing, or other shipment location.
- Match the commodity: compare the same crop or product group rather than an aggregate import total with a narrower domestic category.
- Match the time period: identify whether data cover a calendar year, fiscal year, quarter, or month. Seasons matter for produce, and the periods are not automatically comparable.
- Match the measure: keep value and volume separate. A change in dollar value alone does not establish that physical quantities changed in the same way.
- Use data designed for the question: USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Trade of the United States (FATUS) provides trade volume and value by major country and commodity, with calendar-year, fiscal-year, and monthly series. ERS’s FATUS overview describes the data.
These checks help prevent a national sourcing trend from being mistaken for a direct measure of regional farm competition. State-specific conclusions require a clearly defined commodity, geography, period, and data method; national import shares alone cannot establish those effects.
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