I hate avocados. But I have a wife who loves them and in California, it’s all but impossible to get good ones unless you plant a tree in your own backyard. 

Environmentalists and open border globalist traders wrecked California’s avocado business. Water management starved farms, especially those with ‘thirsty’ crops, and the door was opened to massive avocado imports from Mexico.

This was seen as win-win. 

Mexico would bear the cost of growing avocados while California farmers could go to hell. California elites would get cheap avocados and everything would work out. 

For a while it went okay for everyone who wasn’t an American farmer. And then the marketplace did its thing. Since there wasn’t much competition, the price of the Mexican product rose and as shortages increased, the cartels got their grips on the product and began really cashing in.

Now things have come to a head.

Mexico has acknowledged that the U.S. government has suspended all imports of Mexican avocados after a U.S. plant safety inspector in Mexico received a threat…

Avocado exports are the latest victim of the drug cartel turf battles and extortion of avocado growers in the western state of Michoacan, the only state in Mexico fully authorized to export to the U.S. market.

The U.S. government suspended all imports of Mexican avocados “until further notice” after a U.S. plant safety inspector in Mexico received a threatening message, Mexico’s Agriculture Department said in a statement.

“U.S. health authorities…made the decision after one of their officials, who was carrying out inspections in Uruapan, Michoacan, received a threatening message on his official cellphone,” the department wrote.

Threatening messages in Mexico are a prelude to a beheading.

The D of A actually did the right thing here. It’s a rare occasion where we’re actually sending a message that we won’t be intimidated. That said, I imagine plenty of inspectors have been suborned. Mexico runs on corruption and the cartels are pretty good at buying government officials. Including ours. 

That the inspector got a threat suggests that he repeatedly refused to be corrupted. If it took this long, imagine how many of his colleagues are dirty.

What this really should do is provide an opportunity to end Mexican imports.

It was only in 1997 that the U.S. lifted a ban on Mexican avocados that had been in place since 1914 to prevent a range of weevils, scabs and pests from entering U.S. orchards.

Put the ban back on.

The bottom line is that Mexican exports, especially those produced in areas of Mexico dominated by cartels, are going to be under cartel control. Importing the means putting money into the pockets of the cartels.

Many avocado growers in Michoacan say drug gangs threaten them or their family members with kidnapping or death unless they pay protection money, sometimes amounting to thousands of dollars per acre.

Who do you think is really paying that money? Americans who buy Mexican avocados. 

Much as with China, we outsourced our industries and are funding our enemies who turn around and use that money to cause us harm. 

Libertarians will say that the answer is more deregulation. No, the answer is not doing business with our enemies except when the arrangement benefits us. When we dismantle our own industries and become dependent on our enemies, then we pay the price. And not just at the supermarket.