PAJARO – Mention free trade, and you'll get a skeptical snort from Eugene Tsugi.
For more than three decades, Tsugi and his family have grown roses in greenhouses along San Juan Road.
But in 1991, aiming to give Colombia an alternative to the export of illegal drugs, U.S. officials slashed tariffs on a range of imports, including cut flowers. The result: Trade in cheap Colombian bouquets blossomed, and California's cut flower industry withered. The Pajaro Valley, once a mainstay in the rose business, saw a wholesale shuttering of greenhouses.
Now, as a new trade deal moves through Congress to replace the 1991 law that expired in February, California growers are grabbing the chance to get some help with the competition.
For Tsugi, one of the last Pajaro Valley rose growers still standing, the idea of securing federal dollars to build a flower distribution hub to reduce freight costs might be too little, too late.
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