Free chips and salsa at Mexican and Tex-Mex restaurants could soon be a casualty of President Donald Trump's trade war with Mexico.
The administration's tariffs on Mexican tomato exports are making the traditional appetizer too costly for restaurants to just give away.
The Trump administration imposed a 17% tariff on Mexican tomatoes in July 2025, ostensibly with the aim of protecting U.S. farmers from foreign competition and boosting domestic production. Mexico accounts for roughly 90% of the tomatoes the U.S. has imported since 2015, worth more than $3 billion, according to a study by Texas A&M University AgriLife Extension Service.
Grocery stores and restaurants were initially able to absorb the higher costs rather than passing them on to consumers. But then, bad weather in Mexico and Florida reduced supplies, and tomato prices jumped to their highest level in two decades.
"As a result, we saw the fresh tomato market jumped to about $80 a box," said Dante Galeazzi, president of the Texas International Produce Association. "We saw, as American consumers, that there was a point in late April and almost the entire month of May, where grocery stores were not carrying tomatoes. So that’s a clear reflection of price elasticity where the buyers just say, ‘You know what? We’re not going to participate.'"
Restaurants have held out a few months longer, in large part because customers have become accustomed to free chips and salsa. But food costs overall have spiked roughly 35% over the past two years, in part due to the tariffs.
Kelsey Erickson Streufert, chief public affairs officer for the Texas Restaurant Association, said her members are now dealing with a raft of other escalating expenses.
"The challenge is for our Texas restaurants, they operate on very narrow profit margins in what I would call good economic times," Streufert said, "and right now we’re living in a time of very high costs on food — which is most restaurants’ biggest line item — but also labor, utilities, credit card swipe fees, insurance. Almost everything that it takes to run a restaurant these days is significantly more expensive than it was a year or two ago."
The San Antonio Business Journal has reported that some restaurants in that city spend tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on salsa ingredients. That may no longer be sustainable.
"You have restaurants that are simply saying, ‘Look, I can’t afford to put salsa on the tables anymore,'” Galeazzi said. "What are consumers going to do? Where are consumers going to find this relief?"
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