Not sure what Trump’s tariffs will do to your wallet? Your burrito guy can tell you | Opinion
The beauty of Mexican food is not just that it is delicious, but it’s also ubiquitous, especially here.
Back home, in New York City, good Mexican can be found. But the kind of Mexican that’s unquestionably superior to reheating those freezer-burnt Trader Joe’s leftovers is something to be pursued, Googled ahead of time. Over in Texas, you don’t need a plan. Any street corner or strip mall could have you stumbling upon the best burrito of your life. The destination spots are world-class — note the Michelin Guide’s mention for Birrieria y Taqueria Cortez — but the random trucks parked outside the dive bars and fast-casual chains beat almost anything you’d find elsewhere.
Ramiro Ramirez told me he created Salsa Limon to bring an efficient, consistent experience of the flavors he cherished from his childhood. His mom is from Oaxaca and his dad from McAllen, and he grew up between Mexico City and the Rio Grande Valley, fortunate enough to develop an acute taste for delicious Mexican food. Today, Salsa Limon has locations across Fort Worth, Dallas, Austin and Arlington.
But Ramirez warns that everything that makes restaurants like his so incredible, affordable and thus abundant might be finished come Valentine’s Day. President Donald Trump pledged that on February 1, the United States would place tariffs of 25% on imports from Canada and Mexico, as well as a 10% percentage on goods coming from China.
How does that affect the ingredients that make Salsa Limon so delicious? “We don’t grow them in, you know, Waxahachie,” Ramirez said, just in case you needed him to state the obvious.
“They come from Mexico.” Which means those Trump tariffs aren’t just coming for our border nations. They’re coming for you.
Shortly before and after the election, Google recorded a massive spike in searches for the phrase “who pays for tariffs,” a sign the American electorate wasn’t aware of how groceries and gas prices could balloon under the 47th president.
That’s fine. Not everyone gets to take a macroeconomics class. You might not know what a tariff means for you. But your local burrito guy does. And he’ll give you the macroeconomic lesson you missed when your check arrives.
While Ramirez is running through some of his Mexican imports, I’m sitting across the table vacuuming Salsa Limon’s “El Campeon,” a girthy barbacoa and crema burrito decorated with bomba and packed with a runny egg that ran me about $12 bucks before taxes. He lists the obvious, such as avocados and the limes where he gets his shop’s namesake, to more obscure chiles and spices like as “epazote” — a Nahuatl indigenous crop key to his menu. All originating south of the border wall. Every bite of the habanero sauce I doused on my El Campeon stings my lips; but every tariffed ingredient he mentions sears my soul.
“Honestly, you guys” — referring to his loyal customers — “are gonna have to just understand that it’s not something that we’re doing arbitrarily,” he said. “We’re reacting to market conditions to be able to be a profitable business. I mean, otherwise, you know, we can’t sustain our operations.”
Sometimes, good government can result in pricier goods. For example: We tax cigarettes because we know smoking them has no nutritional value and actually harms your health, so it’s worth disincentivizing the behavior. Lowering the minimum wage to zero would probably make our cotton cheaper, but we fought a whole war about that.
But Trump’s tariff threats are unlikely to improve anyone’s quality of life. It’s his proxy punishment on other nations for the misfortune of neighboring us. Already, Mexico, Canada, China and Europe — where Trump is threatening tariffs if Denmark doesn’t cede Greenland for American conquest — and China are planning retaliatory tariffs. Colombia already barked back with a counter tariff, and the nations stopped feuding, for now.
If those tariffs go through, they will make those limons at the grocery store cost more, for Ramirez and for you.
University of Nebraska economist John Begin told me in an email that Trump’s 25% tariff alone “would disrupt supply chains for entities depending on Mexican imported products,”
“Mexico is about 50% of our fruit and vegetables imports,” he added. “Say if imported produce are 30% of the unit cost of a [restaurant] meal, the tariff of 25% on these produce items, would increase the cost of a meal by…7.5%.” Beghin’s offering a macro level generalization — if most of the menu is sourced from not-Waxachie, expect a much bigger price bump.
“All this could be US political posturing to gain leverage on Mexico,” Beghin wrote. “But the uncertainty for supply chains is unsettling and costly as well”
If there’s a silver lining, Beghin said he believes that prices for restaurant items could, eventually, normalize somewhat as “other sources would be identified, and the inflationary pressure will be diminished.”
But, that’s if you’re willing to compromise your menu, and maybe, deliver food that doesn’t taste like it used to. Ramirez doesn’t want that for Salsa Limon or for you. He says he’ll try his best to pivot.
“One of the things where I feel some hope is that we come from Oaxaca, so we know how to make delicious things out of [expletive] beans. We’ll have something to put in front of you that you can afford, and that’ll be delicious.”
I hate that he’s still thinking about the customer, even when a little more than half of his neighbors voted to put him in this bind.
Ultimately, people like Ramirez are more than the food they put on our plate, whether they plucked it on a farm or prepped it in a kitchen. Their lives matter independent of their service to us. And they don’t deserve the convenient scapegoating for our country’s addictions and obsessions.
But if you can’t value Ramirez’s humanity in and of itself, you might value what punishing him will do to your wallet.
Because those food items that Salsa Limon — and every place dotting our street corners and strip malls — doesn’t want to compromise on and can’t slap on a value meal, well, somebody’s gotta pay for that.
Who, exactly? Probably worth Googling before your next trip to the polls.
This story was originally published February 1, 2025 at 5:35 AM with the headline "Not sure what Trump’s tariffs will do to your wallet? Your burrito guy can tell you | Opinion."
