U.S.-MexicoMexican cinema chain: U.S. popcorn exports at risk

The head of Mexico’s largest cinema chain has warned that renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) may put the U.S. popcorn industry is at risk.

Alejandro Ramirez’s company, Cinepolis de Mexico – the fourth largest cinema chain in the world – buys around $10 million of kernels from Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa.

The New York Post reports that Ramirez said the impact on the peso of Donald Trump’s campaign had already led the company to look into importing from Argentina instead. He said that further negative impact following renegotiations would mean that his business would be forced to pull the plug.

The company spends $40 million a year on U.S. goods, including screens, projectors, and $6.5 million of cheese from Wisconsin, which is melted over nachos.

“We import all of our corn for movie theatres from the United States thanks to the fact that there’s free trade,” Ramirez told Bloomberg. “If that wasn’t the case – if we go to pre-NAFTA tariff levels – then it would be cheaper to bring it from Argentina.”

“A lot of the value chains are complex and nobody has really told people that,” said Ramirez, who is the head of a business chamber seeking to educate U.S. politicians about the benefits of economic integration. “We all need to work better to inform. In the past, it was not necessary, because we never thought free trade would be put at risk.”

Mexico is the largest U.S. popcorn market and accounts for almost a third of all exports. In recent years, Mexican demand for American goods has grown dramatically, rising threefold since 2006, while the rest of the export market increased by only 10 percent.

China, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and Russia follow Mexico as the U.S. largest export destinations. The biggest consumers of popcorn are Americans, consuming an estimated 28 billion quarts annually.