Mexico's retaliatory tariff on US Animal Feed exports

Mexico’s fifty percent surtax on US yellow corn is the steepest flat retaliatory rate any American agricultural exporter faces, and it lands on one of the largest single commodity flows on the continent. Yellow corn, classified under Harmonised System heading 1005.90, moves south from the US Midwest in enormous volume to feed Mexican livestock and poultry, and Mexico is the largest foreign buyer of the American crop. A surtax of this size on that trade is not a marginal adjustment — it is large enough to redirect grain flows, advantage alternative suppliers, and reshape a planting and marketing relationship that both sides have relied on for decades.

The measure took effect March 15, 2025 through a presidential Decretoissued by Mexico’s federal executive and published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación, with the Secretaría de Economía responsible for the operational detail. The rate recorded here is verified through the ITA Foreign Retaliations Database; the precise Decreto reference is being confirmed against the Diario Oficial as part of a later legal review, so the official gazette is named here as the authority of record rather than linked directly. An exporter relying on the exact citation should check the current Diario Oficial publication.

Two features make this corn measure distinct from the other agricultural lines on this site. First, it is an active charge, not a withdrawal — unlike China’s agricultural retaliation, which was lifted in late 2025, Mexico’s corn surtax remains in force as recorded. Second, it is written to fall on shipments that do not qualify under the Canada-United-States-Mexico Agreement, mirroring the qualifying-versus-non-qualifying structure Canada used, so the practical burden depends on whether a given cargo can establish USMCA-qualifying status.

The decree mechanism amplifies the risk by acting fast. Because a Decreto takes legal force on publication, a surtax can appear with far less lead time than a US tariff proceeding that runs through notice-and-comment periods, and a measure can be in force before grain already in transit clears Mexican customs. For a US corn exporter, the practical response is to confirm the live rate and the shipment’s USMCA status before pricing, to allocate tariff risk explicitly in forward contracts rather than assuming a stable duty environment, and to watch the political temperature of the North American trade relationship, since a charge this large on a flow this central is unusually sensitive to the state of negotiations.

See also: Mexico tariff overview, Animal Feed, and Mexico’s full retaliation list.