Tim Brian, president of Smeltzer Orchard Co. in Frankfort and a member of the domestic trade committee, said the ITC accepted Turkish exporters’ financial numbers rather than the public information the U.S. group submitted. Because of the proprietary withholding of some information, he said he doesn’t have a good explanation for why.

“It’s disappointing,” he said, adding that an appeal to federal court is unlikely. “Unless there’s a flaw with the data, it would just go back to the same people.”

The International Trade Commission vote rejecting the cherry committee’s petition was 5-0.

Another avenue of attack

Another tart cherry industry group is pursuing a new avenue of attack, filing a separate action that accuses Turkey of essentially fencing its product into the U.S. through Brazil.

Exactly one week after the ITC decision was announced Jan. 14, the Dewitt-based Cherry Marketing Institute filed a formal complaint with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, requesting investigation of what it suggested was a suspicious and dramatic increase in shipments of tart cherry juice from Brazil in 2019.

Julie Gordon, president of the cherry institute, told Bridge that its internal probe showed that Brazil, not a big tart cherry producer, exported 315,000 liters of tart cherry juice to the United States from January to November 2018, but that those exports had exploded to 3.9 million liters over those same months in 2019.

In 2019, Turkish exports of tart cherry juice to the United States fell by about 2 million liters from the previous year. The change came after Turkey lost its “developing nation” duty-free status when President Donald Trump signed a measure in November 2018, adding Turkey to a list of nations required to pay the half-cent per liter duty on cherry juice exports. Brazil, however, still had the special status. A bilateral scheme to avoid a duty would be illegal.

“This is pretty aggressive for us. I don’t believe we’ve ever done a customs allegation in the 20 years I’ve been here,” Gordon told Bridge. “But we’ve never had the trade issues we’ve had the past few years.”