A beloved freebie at Mexican and Tex-Mex restaurants could soon disappear as President Donald Trump's tariffs on Mexican tomatoes push costs higher.
The Trump administration imposed a 17 percent tariff on tomatoes from Mexico in July 2025, saying it would protect American farmers and boost domestic production, but those duties and recent bad weather sent prices soaring – and Texas Public Radio reported that could force restaurants to charge customers for chips and salsa.
Mexico has supplied roughly 90 percent of the tomatoes the U.S. has imported since 2015, a market worth more than $3 billion, according to a Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service study.
At first, grocers and restaurants absorbed the added costs, but bad weather in Mexico and Florida cut supplies and raised prices to their highest level in two decades.
"We saw the fresh tomato market jumped to about $80 a box," said Dante Galeazzi, president of the Texas International Produce Association.
Prices got so high that some grocery stores stopped carrying tomatoes altogether for much of May, Galeazzi said.
Restaurants have held on longer, largely because diners expect complimentary chips and salsa. But overall food costs have jumped roughly 35 percent over the past two years, partly because of the tariffs.
"You have restaurants that are simply saying, 'Look, I can't afford to put salsa on the tables anymore,'" Galeazzi said. "What are consumers going to do? Where are consumers going to find this relief?"
The San Antonio Business Journal has reported that some restaurants in the city spend tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on salsa ingredients.
Kelsey Erickson Streufert, chief public affairs officer for the Texas Restaurant Association, said tomatoes are only part of the problem.
"Right now we're living in a time of very high costs on food — which is most restaurants' biggest line item — but also labor, utilities, credit card swipe fees, insurance," she said. "Almost everything that it takes to run a restaurant these days is significantly more expensive than it was a year or two ago."
She added that Texas restaurants "operate on very narrow profit margins" even in good times.