For a little over three months in 2025, Brazilian coffee arriving in the United States paid a 50% tariff. Brazil is the biggest single supplier of coffee to the US, and the US grows almost none of its own; Hawaii and Puerto Rico produce a tiny fraction of what Americans drink. So the tariff landed on the price of a cup. Here’s what happened, and where things stand now.
The Timeline
- July 2025: President Trump announces a 50% tariff on Brazilian goods, set to start on August 1.
- July 30, 2025: an executive order adds 40% on top of an existing 10%, for 50% in total. Coffee isn’t exempted.
- August 6, 2025: the tariff takes effect.
- November 14, 2025: a new order takes the 10% “reciprocal” tariff off a list of farm goods, coffee among them, backdated to November 13.
- November 20, 2025: another order removes the extra 40% from 238 farm product lines, including coffee, beef and orange juice, also backdated to November 13. Soluble coffee isn’t covered by this relief.
- July 22, 2026: a new 25% tariff on Brazil under Section 301 of US trade law takes effect, with coffee on its exclusion list.
What It Did to Prices
The futures market moved fast. Arabica rose about 50% from early August to $4.21 a pound on September 15, 2025, close to its record. Brazil kept exporting, but much less of its coffee went to the US. American imports of Brazilian coffee fell 46% in August and about 53% in September compared with a year earlier, and for the first nine months of 2025 they were down 25%, at 4.36 million bags.
After the November orders, arabica fell about 5% and dropped back below $4. That didn’t mean quick relief on the shelf. US retail coffee prices kept climbing into 2026. They were 20.9% higher than a year earlier in August 2025 and still up 17.5% in May 2026. By August 2026 the annual rise had slowed to 6.1%.
Why It Hit So Hard
Tariffs usually protect a domestic industry. With coffee there’s none to protect, since the US can’t grow it at scale, so importers had no local alternative. A 50% duty on the largest supplier left them two choices: pay it, or buy elsewhere at a time when the whole world market was already tight. Either way, the cost ended up with roasters and cafés, and in the end with the people drinking the coffee.
Where Things Stand
As of September 2026, the 2025 duties on Brazilian coffee are gone, and coffee is on the exclusion list for the new Section 301 tariff. Brazil’s record 2026 harvest has pulled arabica down to about $2.89 a pound, well under the tariff-era highs. For the latest numbers, see our September 2026 price update, and for how those prices get set, how the C price works.