In November, Coree Carver finally signed contracts with retailers to sell her Southeast Asian-grown fruit into the United States.
The Idahoan is the founder of Grove Fruit Growers, which grows mangos in Cambodia and processes them in Vietnam. After the COVID-19 pandemic brought her business to a halt, she moved her product to the Russian market — only to have to be forced out when Russia invaded Ukraine. Then as she worked to readjust her business plans, she was in a car accident that caused a brain injury.
After years of disruptions, she finally solidified buyers in the U.S. But the Trump administration announced 49% tariffs on Cambodia and 46% on Vietnam — targeting the countries where her business operates. While those tariffs are paused until July, if implemented, Carver said it would result in the end of her business.
Carver said she supports fair trade and believes the U.S. has not “gotten a fair shake with China.” However, she said universal tariffs do not make sense.
“We don’t even grow mangos in the U.S.,” she told the Idaho Capital Sun. “So it’s not protecting U.S. industry, because it’s just been a blanket tariff put on most of the world. It really wasn’t strategically looked at to say, ‘What industries do we want to protect or support?’ It’s just thrown at mango farmers, which is so bizarre.”
A mission that’s more than just the mangos
Before becoming the owner of a 110 acre mango farm in Cambodia, Carver lived in Taiwan and owned a small food distribution company exporting nuts and grains from the U.S. into Asia, while her husband worked for Micron.
In 2018, after her children were assigned a book in school about the Khmer Rouge — Cambodia’s brutal communist regime that killed most of the educated class between 1975 to 1979 and resorted to a rural agricultural society — Carver said she was in awe that this type of genocide had happened in her lifetime. This inspired her to visit the country with her family.
Upon visiting, she noticed piles of mangos in the countryside.
“I asked why, and they said they can’t find buyers,” she said. “I have this food distribution company, so I was like, ‘Oh, I can connect them to buyers.’”
It took years of geopolitical hurdles and receiving funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development — which the Trump administration dissolved earlier this year — to get a hold on the U.S. market. She can finally sell frozen fruit to retailers, and she is in the process of meeting with dried fruit buyers from major retailers and small grocery stories alike.
Carver, who has a master’s degree from Harvard in sustainable global development, said her business is more than just about selling mangos.
“It’s about development,” she said. “It’s about bringing people out of poverty in Cambodia, but also making a business case for me.”
Retailers are interested in the mission behind her business, Carver said, but if these tariffs go into effect, then the business is done.
“I’m just so deflated,” she said. “I’ve spent so much money. We’ve spent just under a million dollars on this project, just of our own money, not only from getting grants. So, I think I might just be done.”
Do tariffs work, and why Southeast Asia?
During Trump’s first term, he began setting tariffs on China to punish it for what he called unfair trade practices. So who won that trade war?
It wasn’t the U.S. or China — it was Vietnam, according to Rob Dayley, a political economy professor and Southeast Asia expert at the College of Idaho.
“Those first term tariffs merely incentivized companies to move production from China to other low-cost production countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia, countries that then were not in the crosshairs,” Dayley told the Idaho Capital Sun.
To close that loophole 2025, the Trump administration chose to implement universal tariffs on nearby countries to China. Because those tariffs were so high and disruptive in global confidence of the U.S., President Donald Trump backtracked from his “Liberation Day” tariff rates, Dayley said, adding that the broader promises of the tariff policy — reducing deficits, bringing manufacturing back to the U.S., and lowering inflation — is “just not going to happen.”
There is no historical data to support that tariff policies will produce those positive outcomes, he said.
“The idea that manufacturers of shoes, toys, clothing, and other low-skill products would somehow decide to reshore production to Des Moines or Boise because of some import tariffs was unrealistic during Trump’s first term and remains unrealistic in his second term,” Dayley said.
While it makes sense to protect national security industries, such as semi-conductors or other defense-related technologies, Dayley said it doesn’t make sense to punish fruit industries that are not grown in the U.S. If farms, like the Grove Fruit Growers, cannot make a profit, they’ll stop sending their products to the U.S. market, he said.
“If Americans only want to exclude all foreign pineapple or mangos from our U.S. grocery stores (be it fresh, canned, or frozen), then prepare to eat Hawaiian pineapple or mangos at much higher prices,” he said. “When supply goes down, prices go up. It’s that simple.”
Idaho Capital Sun is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Idaho Capital Sun maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Christina Lords for questions: [email protected].
