Trump Just Jacked Up the Cost of Your Coffee
Mistaking tariffs for a weapon rather than a tool of economic policy, Trump hits Colombia...and America's coffee drinkers
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Pres. Donald Trump on Sunday announced posted on his social-media platform that he’s ordering “Emergency 25% tariffs” on every commercial product coming into the U.S. from Colombia.
The tariffs will increase to 50% in a week’s time, Trump said.
Tariffs are, of course, paid to the U.S. government not by foreign governments or even exporters, but by whatever U.S. interest imports the products in question. Rather than eat those costs, importers typically pass on the cost to consumers.
That’s why tariffs are typically used as a tool to level the playing field when companies in other countries, for instance, exploit local labor forces or lax environmental rules to make their products cheaper. Tariffs erase those advantages to give U.S. companies a competitive shot.
Apparently under the impression that tariffs are more like sanctions or artillery, Trump launched the tariffs against Colombia for refusing to allow the landing of “two repatriation flights from the United States, with a large number of Illegal [sic] Criminals [sic].”
Here’s the rest of Trump’s outburst against Colombia’s decision, complete with seething lack of impulse control:
This order was given by Colombia’s Socialist President Gustavo Petro, who is already very unpopular amongst his people. Petro’s denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States, so I have directed my Administration to immediately take the following urgent and decisive retaliatory measures:
-Emergency 25% tariffs on all goods coming into the United States. In one week, the 25% tariffs will be raised to 50%.
-A Travel Ban and immediate Visa Revocations on the Colombian Government Officials, and all Allies and Supporters.
-Visa Sanctions on all Party Members, Family Members, and Supporters of the Colombian Government.
-Enhanced Customs and Border Protection Inspections of all Colombian Nationals and Cargo on national security grounds.
-IEEPA Treasury, Banking and Financial Sanctions to be fully imposed.
These measures are just the beginning. We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!
Trump imposed the tariffs even though Petro left the door open to, uh, leaving the door open for repatriation.
Petro said he’ll continue to block military deportation flights, but said he’ll accept legitimate deportations of Colombian nationals conducted “with dignity and respect for them and for our country. We will receive our fellow citizens on civilian planes, without treating them like criminals.”
It wasn’t immediately clear whether Trump knows how to do that, or whether his administration has sufficient reserves of dignity and respect to spare. In the meantime, Trump’s price hikes could jeopardize the economic well-being of the tiny handful of U.S. companies that rely on imported Colombian coffee.
Among the precious few, boutique outlets TFN was able to identify that sell coffee from Colombia:
In fact, America gets more than a quarter — 27%, which is still more than a quarter — of its coffee from Colombia.
Colombia, however, is only the second biggest supplier of U.S. coffee. The number-one source of coffee imported into the U.S. is Brazil, which just happens also to be tweaking the fuck out over Trump’s deportation flights there.
After 88 deportees showed up in handcuffs — apparently to prevent any D.B. Coopering? — at a Brazilian airport, officials yesterday blasted the “flagrant disregard” for human rights and demanded that the U.S. explain the “degrading treatment of passengers on the flight.”
No word on whether the flights served coffee.
To keep U.S. coffee prices steady in light of Trump’s tariffs, U.S. companies would have to switch to imports from other countries. But for other countries to suddenly produce enough coffee to make up the difference, Trump would have to order coffee trees to bear fruit in two weeks rather than the usual three years or else face an executive order retracting the fundamental principles of plant biology.
In the meantime, Trump’s tariffs will give America’s sprawling coffee-grower industry economic protections that are bold, robust, and hearty. With a nutty aftertaste.
And in case you’re wondering where exactly America’s sprawling coffee-grower industry sprawls, it sprawls all the way from Hawaii to the other end of Hawaii. That’s right, America’s entire commercial coffee-growing is located in a single state. A blue state, come to think of it.
In short, an economic tool designed and intended to give a leg up to domestic manufacturers and farmers facing unfair international competition is now being used despite the almost total lack of existence of said farmers in the continental United States. And that’s despite the fact that Trump’s tariffs will strike a crushing blow against the teeny tiny number of companies that sell coffee and the fringe handful of so-called “coffee drinkers.”
Fun fact, America’s non-coffee drinkers include Donald Trump. Also, the U.S. imports other stuff from Colombia, too, which will also be more expensive now. How’s that for an eye-opener!
The U.S. gets a large percentage of their flowers from Colombia. Cut flowers are flown into the US daily. Now they can be more expensive, too. Just in time for Valentine's Day! Not that Trump was sending flowers to Melania.
Something tells me it exempts Jr’s Colombian nose candy.