National Review Online
Monday, November 17, 2025
President Trump has an affordability agenda to address
rising coffee prices: He’s rolling back his coffee tariffs.
The move is part of a bigger action exempting more than a
hundred common food items from his so-called reciprocal tariffs, including
beef, fruits, spices, and nuts.
The price of coffee in the U.S. has gone up nearly 20
percent over the past year and is at record levels. Weather issues in Brazil
and Vietnam have been a major factor, but Trump’s tariffs have also put upward
pressure on prices.
The coffee tariffs are particularly nonsensical. Even
those of us who can’t function without four cups a day must admit that coffee
is not a strategically sensitive item. Meanwhile, there is no U.S.
coffee-growing industry to speak of, and never will be, so there’s nothing to
protect or nurture (no offense to the relatively small number of growers in
Hawaii).
The coffee tariffs are a function of the president’s
abiding belief that tariffs are, by definition, good. It is true that they
generate revenue — taxes tend to do that — but at the cost of higher prices for
consumers. The administration has been at pains to deny the latter part of that
equation, but, under pressure to do something about prices after the Democratic
victories in the off-year elections, it is now admitting the obvious.
Previewing the tariff relief on food on Fox News the
other day, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said it would come regarding
commodities we don’t grow in the United States, “coffee being one of them.
Bananas, other fruits, things like that. So that will bring the prices down
very quickly.”
The grocers are pleased. “Today’s action should help
consumers, whose morning cup of coffee will hopefully become more affordable,
as well as U.S. manufacturers, which utilize many of these products in their
supply chains and production lines,” the head of an industry group observed
when the move was announced.
It would behoove the administration to apply this logic
more broadly. By one estimate, tariffs are costing the average American
household roughly $1,800 this year, while more than half of tariffed goods are
used to make products here in the United States. It is true that China — a
predatory power hostile to the U.S. — is a special case and that threatening
tariffs can be a way to gain leverage in negotiations, but arguably Trump’s
most significant economic initiative has been to increase prices on consumers
after winning a campaign on the promise that he’d lower them.
This is not a formula for political success. What’s good
for coffee and bananas should be good for a much wider range of imports, as
well.
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