Implications of U.S. Trade Agreements and U.S. Nutrition Policies for Produce Production, Demand, and Trade

This study used aggregated data for fresh vegetables and fresh fruits to analyze how trade flows in the fresh produce industry have changed under trade agreements and to assess the potential implications to nutrition policies in the United States. The first part of the analysis uses a Bai-Perron test to endogenously determine any structural break points in vegetable and fruit trade movements and prices. Directed acyclic graphs and historical decompositions are used to establish causal patterns on innovations from vector autoregression models fitted to annual observations of trade flows, prices, and income. The results showed that trade agreements have had significant impacts to the produce industry. Income was a major determinant of domestic fruit production and imports.