“If we can’t defend our market against predatory dumping practices from other countries, why are we in business?” said Ben LaCross, cherry farmer for LaCross Farms.

An industry crucial to our region is struggling because of unfair foreign competition.

Now efforts from both sides of the aisle are trying to change that.

U.S. Senators Gary Peters of Michigan and Richard Burr of North Carolina reintroduced legislation to help manufacturers and agricultural producers.

Important to our region: cherry growers and dumping.

The definition of dumping from one country to another is selling product in another country at well below the cost of production in-country.

“I’m going to be introducing legislation that will allow us to deal with countries that are engaged in unfair trade activities,” said Senator Peters.

Reintroducing an anti-dumping bill that would allow the Department of Commerce to self-initiate these cases for small industries.

“He’s used the tart cherry industry kind of as a model because we are a tiny industry in the grand scope of things but we are being severely impacted by Turkish tart cherries being flooded into our markets,” said LaCross.

Senator Peters says there is no question cherry growers have been harmed as a result of illegal trade activates by the Turkish government.

“They don’t share a lot of their trade data with the world trade organization, which is mandated by law so they’re not complying with the law,” said LaCross.

“They’ve been subsidizing cherries, they’ve been dumping it on the market place, driving the price down to where there’s no way you can possibly grow cherries at that price and as a result, we have growers that have been close to going out of business now,” said Senator Peters.

To put it into perspective, Turkey can sell one gallon of their tart cherry juice concentrate for $13 here but U.S. farmers have to sell theirs at $30 a gallon just to break even.

“If our farms continue to be impacted like this, farm sizes are going to have to shrink, farmers are going to have to find something else to do,” said LaCross.

Saying help like this is necessary for the industry to survive even just the next few years.

“If the trade rules are fair, Americans we can out compete anybody in the world but the rules have to be fair and if a country violates those rules and in the process damages our small businesses and our workers, we need to stand up,” said Senator Peters.