Supposedly there’s this free trade agreement between the United States and Mexico, but that doesn’t stop the United States from fighting a war on illegal imports of a clearly dangerous product — cheese.
Due to protectionist laws in the United States, cheese is very expensive here. As the Associated Press notes, a wedge of cheese that might sell for $6 in the United States can be had in a Mexican shopping market for $1.50. Moreover, many Americans in Texas prefer the Mexican cheese to the AMerican variety, saying its fresher and tastier as it tends to come from small-scale cheese makers.
As a result, many people buy the cheese at $1.50/wedge or so in Mexico and resell it at $4/wedge in the United States. Which, of course, is completely illegal.
“They don’t want to meet food and drug administration requirements for imports,” Customs supervisor John Deputy told the Associated Press, who notes that people often try to smuggle 50-100 pounds of cheese into the country (what angers the FDA is that the cheese is often made from unpasteurized milk).
Of course what the smugglers really don’t want to do is pay the high tariffs that one has to pay when bringing cheese across the “free trade” zone.
Source:
Cheese smuggling prevalent at Texas Border Points. Associated Press, July 18, 2001.