Coffee Prices Post Largest Annual Jump Since 1997 (cnn.com) 84
US retail coffee prices surged 21% year-over-year in August, the largest annual increase since October 1997, according to Thursday's Consumer Price Index. The monthly 4% jump marks the steepest rise in 14 years. Trump administration tariffs on major coffee exporters -- 50% on Brazil, 20% on Vietnam, and 10% on Colombia -- are driving costs higher as 99% of US coffee consumption relies on imports.
J.M. Smucker plans its third price increase this winter for Folgers and Cafe Bustelo brands after raising prices in May and August. New Orleans chain French Truck Coffee has implemented a 4% tariff surcharge. Starbucks expects peak cost impacts in 2026 due to its advance purchasing practices. KPMG chief economist Diane Swonk predicts prices will exceed historical records as Brazilian tariff effects reach retail shelves.
J.M. Smucker plans its third price increase this winter for Folgers and Cafe Bustelo brands after raising prices in May and August. New Orleans chain French Truck Coffee has implemented a 4% tariff surcharge. Starbucks expects peak cost impacts in 2026 due to its advance purchasing practices. KPMG chief economist Diane Swonk predicts prices will exceed historical records as Brazilian tariff effects reach retail shelves.
Who could have predicted? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Who could have predicted? (Score:4, Informative)
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Waiting for cult members to say how this is a good thing.
Re:Who could have predicted? (Score:4, Funny)
It'll obviously be good for American-grown coffee! Why do you hate American farmers? :-)
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Iowa's rolling farm fields of coffee
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Postum has been resurrected. It is made from wheat and molasses. It was popular with Mormons and others who shun caffeine. It was in my family because my mom and grandmother reacted to coffee, so alternated between tea and Postum, and it was drinkable by kids.
What gets marketed as Kona coffee does not necessarily have much Kona in it. A limited amount of good quality coffee is grown on Maui. There were fairly large new plantings on Kauai some years ago, but that product at the time was insipid. I don'
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Right now, I'm using a Kona blend that's 10% Kona. I buy it as whole beans and grind it as needed because I use a French Press and it works best with a coarse grind that you can't find in the market.
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"Postum has been resurrected."
Mr. Coffee Nerves: "Curses, foiled!"
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Waiting for cult members to say how this is a good thing.
wHy dONt tHeY jUSt MAkE tHe CoFFeE iN aMeRicA? Derp.
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It's good for PepsiCo and Coca-Cola who can sell you their oversugared and overcaffieneated drinks instead for cheap!
Why drink overpriced coffee when you can have your Red Monster Fuel Ade by the gallon for the same price!
And you get to hurt Dr. Pepper (Keurig Dr. Pepper) as well - remove your expensive coffee machine and replace it with our cheap sugar water energy drinks
Yum (Score:2, Funny)
Every morning I like to have a nice hot mug of Coke along with my bacon and eggs.
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Sugar?! You mean Corn Syrup right? Know why they don't use cane sugar? Tariffs on cane sugar to push corn by midwest farmers it seems.
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Coffee is bad for you anyways! Drink Coke!
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Who knew centralized government planning was less efficient than capitalist free markets? Apparently not Comrade Trump or his unAmerican pedophile-lovin' commie voters.
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Socialism with American Characteristics
Mexico will pay for the coffee (Score:2)
Also as a coffee drinker fuck Trump. I mean not literally Jesus Christ he's got syphilis and shit.
Sadly Mexican coffee ain't great (Score:3)
Not on topic, but I just wanted to share.
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When we go to Peru we go down with a suitcase full of gifts for family, and come back with them full of coffee and chocolate from Cusco. Incredible stuff.
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But, but I was assures the tariffs would be paid by the ones sending good to the US! Tariffs do not raise the price of things! Right? Right?
(Obviously I saw the direct shameless lie immediately. But many did not and continue to not connect the dots. Blatantly obvious as things are.)
Trump: (Score:2, Insightful)
Donald J. Trump: "We will bring grocery prices down on day one of my administration."
Uh huh.
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At this point, he's barely cognizant [yahoo.com] of where he's at.
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They did go down on day one, he never said they wouldn't go up on days 2+.
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I wonder how much effect this has on productivity. Coffee must be one of the most widely used performance enhancing drugs.
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I think it hardly matters. The tower of cards the idiots have build is already crashing down. It just takes a bit until the inevitable and catastrophic impact.
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The chocolate ration was raised to 10g per week! The grocery prices are massively cheaper and everything is great!
That’s it (Score:5, Insightful)
I’ll just buy domestically grown coffee! Oh wait
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Re:That’s it (Score:5, Informative)
Kona is domestic. It's also already far more than 50% more expensive than commodity brands like Folgers.
On the other hand, East African coffee is the shit and is experiencing minimal tariffs. Do yourself a favor and pick up an Ethiopian heirloom bean or a more general Kenya blend. Ethiopia alone has more coffee varieties than the entire Western hemispehere.
Kona is pretty hard to find these days (Score:2)
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I mean, you can always just get it shipped: https://www.hawaiicoffeecompan... [hawaiicoffeecompany.com]
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It was a bit weird to see the summary talking about the US relying on imports for 90% of its coffee - surely much closer to 99%!
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I don't know what you do when approximately 47% of the country rejects reality and replaces it with their own.
I know the phrase that I've been seeing that I would like to see more of, think critically and Google competently.
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Closer to one third, we just had about another third or so not get off the couch.
Now it's on! (Score:2)
Now it's on! Jack with my coffee and you're gonna have one hell of a time with me in the morning!
Noo (Score:4, Funny)
Colombia please don't raise the price of your second best export.
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Brasil isn't raising the price of its coffee, Rump did it by slapping tariffs on their exports to the US for prosecuting Bolsonaro, the guy who lost the election and attempted a coup. Apparently this is no longer an acceptable thing for a government to do.
China is happily buying all the coffee that Brasil wants to export, they have the fastest-growing coffee consumption in the world. When the tariffs go away that coffee isn't coming back to the US, since Chinese importers are signing five and ten year co
Coffee Party (Score:2)
Maybe we could start a Coffee Party. Something like that Tea Party from a decade ago, except not a scam.
I think it would show a great contrast with the Covfefe Party.
It's fine (Score:2)
American's are famous for their distaste of coffee. More of a delicacy of the upper class than than anything the working folk cares about.
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I learned to drink black coffee on my first job at 16. That place had tap water, coffee made with tap water, and beer. The owner was a drunk and it was his beer, though he probably would have let his 16 year old driver drink if I wanted to. There was no cream and no sugar. I learned to drink thick black coffee to keep warm and productive, at a blue collar job.
Enjoy your national sales tax (Score:3)
Magats - Are you tired of winning yet? This is not a rhetorical question.
Given where we are - the Brownshirts are murdering each others' leaders in a power struggle while Pee Wee Goebbels was working up to a Reichstag fire false flag - this doesn't seem like the most important detail to me, my rather bad addiction to coffee aside. But as a nation of consumers, maybe it will get someone's attention.
Re:Enjoy your national sales tax (Score:4, Funny)
MAGA folks could lose their house and be huddled around a burning garbage can muttering how at least the libs are suffering too.
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The shooter came from a MAGA family, was white, and the father was law enforcement. Why do you think republicans switched from calling for his death to suddenly praying for him?
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You got moderated "funny", but I think this accurately describes the extreme level of mental dysfunctionality found in the voters that made the current US administration a reality. Failure after failure and they still cheer.
Good (Score:1)
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how about go fuck yourself
You first.
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I drink coffee, and I really enjoy it. But I don't have it every day, or even every week.
I have a problem with all grocery canned and dry goods producers because shrinkflation seems to be worse than actual price inflation. I have a box of crackers, for which the price has increased quite a bit in the last 10 years, but there is now 2x4x10cm of empty space in the same package so the crackers are now about 10% smaller than they used to be. I have the same issue with canned goods. Even when the cans thems
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And though that extra packaging material is there only for the purpose of deceiving you, you still have to pay for it. You pay for even more of it, proportionally, since you have less food inside.
The deception itself has a cost which is additive with the actual inflation.
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Even more annoying to me is when they put that kotex the the package of meat, and then dip it in water before sealing it up, so we're paying for 8 ounces of meat and 4 ounces of water.
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Is Kotex something other than a brand of female sanitary products [wikipedia.org] where you live?
Re: Good (Score:2)
You haven't seen the meat maxi-pads yet?
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OK, "absorbent pad", if you prefer. In any case, it's an excuse to charge meat prices for water.
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Not heard of delirium tremens, then?
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Ethiopian FTW
Who pays the tax (Score:5, Insightful)
So importers, local business and local consumers pay the import fee? Who knew?
happiest people (by self selection) (Score:2)
A lot is going to China (Score:2)
Many coffee suppliers are selling to China now.
1. China is rapidly developing a taste for coffee.
2. American tariffs on coffee exports.
3. The EU Deforestation Act makes it very hard to sell to Europe (illiterate coffee farmers can't supply the necessary paperwork)
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Chinese importers are taking the opportunity to sign long term contracts with Brasilian farms. When the tariffs go away that coffee isn't coming back.
Coffee embargo (Score:2)
Biased article (Score:1)
Environmental conditions, like drought in Brazil, and other related issues in Vietnam and Colombia, is the main cause.
Besides the tariffs, which do make a difference, commodity markets are seeing an opportunity, and driving up prices. Taxes don't help these markets, but they can be driven by scarcity.
Here's another article [cnbc.com], which state
Re: Biased article (Score:3)
Actual Brazilian here. Yes, prices were driven up by climatic change last few years. But last 6 months production started to recover and prices actually went down. Here, in supermarkets, prices fell around 15% last months.
https://www.gcrmag.com/global-... [gcrmag.com]
Any increases for US since then are because of tariffs.
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Q
What's the overall tariff on coffee for the US? Please average it by weighting the size of imports and tariff % from each coffee producing country.
A
... This suggests a weighted average tariff of approximately 25-30% on US coffee imports, though this is a rough estimate...
That's with the 2024 import volumes from each country;
Coffee is where the reciprocal tariffs fail (Score:3)
However, there's NO WAY Ethiopia could afford to buy as many US goods and services as we buy from them. They're small and poor. If every man, woman, and child in Ethiopia spent every penny on American goods, it would never match our demand for theirs. It never can.
The notion of a trade imbalance is a dated concept when we were concerned about Japan in the 80s. Japan has a similar economy to ours and competes directly with us, especially in the 70s and 80s. Most countries don't compete with us where we're strong: computers, cars, construction equipment, power tools, agriculture at scale, software, technology, financial services, etc. Japan does. China does. a few countries in Europe do, but most of the world doesn't.
Trade imbalances don't make sense unless you similar production skills and similar consumption bases. Honestly, even with Japan and China, they don't make a lot of sense. They're a poor means of evaluating economic performance...but that is something one can debate...you definitely can't debate trade imbalances with countries like Ethiopia or New Zealand, who export valuable unique agricultural crops we cannot produce locally, but have small populations and economies to consume American goods.
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Actually the tariff on Basil is because they prosecuted Rump's buddy Bolsonaro for attempting a coup. Apparently that's no longer allowed.
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The issue with trade imbalance complaints is that a country trades with more than just one other country. They might be running a surplus against the US, but they almost certainly are running a deficit with somebody else. Otherwise their currency would appreciate dramatically.
Also, completely missing from the trade discussion is services. The US exports a lot of services, which is part of the reason the US dollar remains quite strong.
Get coffee when on sale, don't pay $15-20 (Score:2)