WATER for Farmers Act

Key Points

• The bill requires Mexico to deliver at least 350,000 acre-feet of water per year from the Rio Grande under the 1944 Water Treaty. The Secretary of State must determine within 30 days after each treaty year whether Mexico met this target. If not, Mexico is considered in a water delivery shortfall.
• If Mexico falls short on water deliveries, the U.S. Trade Representative would impose tariffs on Mexican imports. The tariffs would target agricultural products and goods from regions that use Rio Grande water. If the shortfall continues into a second or third year, the tariffs would get even higher or cover more products.
• Money collected from these tariffs would go into a new South Texas Agricultural Compensation Trust Fund. That fund would pay farmers in the Rio Grande Valley for economic losses caused by the water shortfall, without needing any additional approval from Congress.
• The compensation formula accounts not just for direct crop losses but also for ripple effects across the local economy, including job losses, supply chain disruptions, and closures of agricultural processing businesses.
• The bill also creates a new transparency requirement: the International Boundary and Water Commission must publicly report detailed, real-time data on water deliveries, shortfall calculations, and compensation payments every month.