Editorial: Avocado Tariff by Bobby Jonte

Posted

Just when I thought it was safe to go outside.

I’ve got a friend that keeps up with everything. He watches about 4 hours of news every day. That’s good and bad. Lots of news shows are just opinions. Depending on what channel he is watching, the same news seems to come from different planets. Now he has been watching a lot of news about tariffs with trade from China and Mexico. Now he is worried about trade imbalance and what the cost of goods will be and whether Wal-Mart will have anything to sell. Most of the things that seem to worry him don’t bother me at all.

Now he’s come up with the most important thing ever. Tariffs will be imposed on Mexico. Avocados will have a tariff. He thinks this is the worst thing in the world. There might not be any avocados imported. Where will we be then? He’s given me a rundown on the price of avocados and the detrimental effect on the price of a salad.

I’ve gotten a lecture about this tariff and the bad things that will happen if no avocados get into this country. After a long dissertation I had to tell him that I had no interest in avocados. I didn’t know where avocados came from. I was sure that we must grow some in the USA. If all the avocados come from Mexico, so be it. I can’t think of any time I’ve ever eaten them. I had to look up the spelling twice to figure out how to even write avocado.

Now I’m trying to figure out if I eat anything that has an avocado hidden in it. It sounds like this is grown in some remote place and the world only has 10 acres of the stuff. I’m sure there is some foodstuff that is grown on a mountaintop only accessed by trained camels or something but I don’t eat that either.

The tariff scare is over. Now my friend is worried about the weather for the 4thof July. With all the parades, parties and fireworks, my friend is worried about danger from fireworks accidents and the accidental starting of forest wild fires. Luckily there is a chance of rain everyday this week. The forest fire threat will probably be a non-event.

My friend is out of town for the holiday. It will probably be another week before the news cycle gets on something else to worry about. Thank goodness that the avocados were the only things I had to worry about during the 4th. It would have been worse if nuclear arms or a line of tornados were in the news.

I have suggested that he cut down on the news shows and get on to something better. He spends most of his mornings watching these political news shows. If he rearranged his watching habits, he could be watching shows in the afternoon. There are much better, easier to watch and the worry factor doesn’t last as long. You might even hear that wonderful phrase, “You are not the Father!”