Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) has announced plans to introduce bipartisan legislation aimed at repealing President Donald Trump’s tariffs on imported coffee, saying that the current policy drives up costs for U.S. consumers.
Coffee Tax A Significant Financial Burden
On Thursday, in a post on X, Khanna said the United States produces “less than 1%” of the coffee it consumes, making the tariffs on imports from Brazil, Vietnam, Indonesia and Colombia a significant financial burden for consumers.
See Also: Trump’s Tariff Storm Could Soon Hit American Consumers: Here’s Why
“Anyone who has a coffee cup always in hand hates this tax!” he says, adding that it’s a 15% to 20% “tax on Americans at the start of their day,” which has to go.
Khanna, however, hasn’t laid out the contents of this bill and has yet to provide a timeline for its introduction and progression.
Harvard economist Jason Furman has backed Khanna’s proposal, saying that even during President Richard Nixon’s 10% “across-the-board” tariffs in 1971, coffee was among the exempted commodities. “It is hard to understand what the Trump administration is thinking economically, let alone politically, with this one,” he says.
We Can’t Bring The Coffee Industry To The United States
A month ago, economist Justin Wolfers criticized the logic behind applying tariffs on commodities like coffee, calling it “literally a tax on Americans,” since it won’t lead to any increase in the domestic supply. “We can’t bring the coffee industry back to the United States, nowhere near enough,” he says, leaving consumers to bear the burden.
Data scientist and X user, Hunter, refers to the coffee tariffs as “mystifying,” noting that the U.S. “climatically cannot grow coffee in any appreciable quantities,” while still being the world’s largest consumer of it.
Photo Courtesy: Phil Pasquini on Shutterstock.com
Read More:
