By Jim Kinney | jkinney@repub.com
CHICOPEE – Avocados from Mexico used to sell five for $3. But after President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on Mexico, the best prices at Fruit Fair supermarket in Chicopee were three for $5.
“Things stopped going on sale,” said Samaita Newell, owner of the market.
That goes as well for tropical fruits and for the store’s aisle of imported delicacies from Poland and elsewhere in Central Europe.
Trump’s imposition of tariffs was largely struck down Friday by the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision.
It was a decision guided in part by legal arguments made by lawyers working for Democrats in Congress. U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal, D-Springfield, insisted that the power to tax rests with the House of Representatives, not with the office of president.
“It’s the only institution in the federal galaxy that has the ability to impose a tax,” Neal said Friday in a phone interview, referring to the House. He is the ranking Democrat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee. “A tariff is a tax.”
Neal said for the court, it was not an economic policy argument, but a Constitutional one.
Neal and others have been making an economic argument against the tariffs as well.
Last week, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said that in 2025, the average tariff rate on imported goods rose to 13% from just 2.6% before. And 90% of that cost was borne by U.S. companies.
“It confirmed our argument,” Neal said.
At Fruit Fair, Newell said tariffs had the advantage of making locally grown produce competitive with imported foods.
“That’s good for the local farmers we work with,” she said.
Joe Sulda, engineering manager for Pilot Precision Products in South Deerfield, said the business depends on imported steel that’s right for making cutting tools. Anticipating the tariffs, Pilot Precision stocked up.
But that was a year ago. “In some cases, we are running out of that material that we bought before materials cost more,” he said in a phone interview Friday.
“It’s a greater cost and it affects our overhead,” he said.
Some businesses, led by retail giant Costco, are expected to sue for refunds of tariffs they paid over the last year, Neal said.
The tariffs resulted in roughly $240 billion in revenue to the U.S Customs Bureau since April 2025. Neal said that number has probably grown.
“My guess is the president will slow walk those refunds and there will be a series of court challenges over how those refunds will be paid,” Neal said.
Neal said Republicans in Congress might be quietly relieved that the tariffs were struck down by the Supreme Court. The decision recognized the role the House is assigned by the Constitution to play.
Now is the time for Congress to re-assert its role in trade policy, one it let slip away for decades, Neal said.
“There is an opportunity for the president and Congress to sit deliberately and discuss trade policies,” Neal said.
In Washington on Friday, Trump imposed a worldwide 10% tariff as an alternative, while pledging to press his trade policies through other means.
