U.S. Coffee Prices Soar 21%... The Cost of "Trump Tariffs"

Up 20.9% Year-on-Year
Supply Shortages and Tariff Shock Combine

Coffee prices in the United States have surged sharply this year. This is due to both poor harvests in major coffee-producing countries and the additional impact of reciprocal tariffs imposed by the Trump administration.

On September 11 (local time), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for August. Coffee prices rose by 20.9% compared to the same period last year. According to the Financial Times, this is the largest increase since the 1990s. The overall CPI rose by 0.4% from the previous month, slightly higher than expected.

Coffee. Photo by AP Yonhap News

In August alone, coffee prices increased by 3.6%. The price of ground coffee sold at local grocery stores in the United States reached an all-time high of $8.87 per pound (approximately 12,300 won).

Analysts attribute this to a combination of supply shortages and the shock of tariffs. Global coffee supply has contracted due to poor harvests in major coffee-exporting countries such as Brazil, the world's largest coffee producer. In addition, in July, U.S. President Donald Trump announced a 50% tariff on Brazilian coffee imports.

According to data from the shipping analytics company Vizion, the volume of coffee exported from Brazil to the United States has plummeted to half of last year's level so far this year. In August in particular, exports dropped by 75% compared to the same month last year. Imports from other coffee-producing countries such as Vietnam and Colombia have not been sufficient to make up for the shortfall.

Thijs Geijer, an economist at the Dutch global financial group ING, told the Financial Times that "if Americans continue to consume coffee as usual, (corporate) inventories will eventually run out," emphasizing that additional imports are necessary but there are no suitable countries to import from. He also explained that it can take up to 20 days for coffee shipped from Brazilian ports to arrive at U.S. ports, and that the beans must go through a roasting process before being distributed as ground coffee. As a result, it could take more than two months for the supply shortage to be resolved.