Coffee prices up and away — in the US.
Figure 1: Price of coffee, US city average (brown), BLS import price index for coffee (blue), global price of Arabica coffee, in USD (light green), all in logs, 2025M04=0. Note that the BLS import price index DOES NOT INCLUDE TARIFFS. Source: BLS via FRED, World Bank, and author’s calculations.
Thank goodness, Mr. Trump is protecting our heroic coffee producers here in America!
Gets me thinking. Just Hawaii and Puerto Rico farm coffee? P.R. is a wild guess.
Puerto Rico does produce coffee, but consumes a lot of it. Its total contribution to world coffee production is less than 0.01% (as is Hawaii, a larger coffee producer than Puerto Rico).
I hear Bruce Hall has a factory that is trying to produce coffee beans in Michigan. Something tells me this is not going to do well. After all beans are grow not manufactured.
I guess I will have to substitute my morning cup with a Miller – light
test
Indeed, I paided $89.98 for 4 pounds of organic Columbian decaf from Costco in July and my repeat order (just placed) went all the way up to $89.98. That’s just awful.
Oh, wait….
Bruce Hall: So… proof by anecdote. On the other hand, take a look at some data, and/or a study: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2274401
Will note that pass-through takes time, so expect more price increases over time.
Cherry picked anecdotes. My Costco coffee used to be $13.95 and now its $17.95. Clearly proving that ?????
Clearly proving you’re selecting the wrong coffee. 😉
Substituting coffee for shit is always an option – if you get desperate
Oh, that was 4 packages of 2lbs. each so it was even more awful.
4 or 8 pounds? Like we know you’re too weak to lift anymore than 5 pounds.
Among “Food at home”, coffee tops the chart:
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/11/inflation-breakdown-for-august-2025.html
Also note that natural gas and electricity is getting high. Trumps war on cheep energy is going to take that from bad to worse – even as the rest of the world is choosing the cheaper alternative energy sources such as solar and wind.
$20 per pound for coffee? It should be less than $10 per pound. Either you are an idiot or inflation is worse than feared.
MD has been trying to get Bruce Hall to realize that screwworm parasites hit south Mexico not Texas. But poor Brucie never learned to read a map.
Yes, James, the infestation is in Mexico now, but moving quickly to the US.
Washington has halted cattle imports from Mexico and invested millions in setting up a new sterile fly production plant in Metapa, Mexico. But it will take roughly a year to come online. So, cattle producers in the U.S. are stockpiling insecticides, making contingency plans and sounding the alarm that a shortage of skilled ranch labor will hamstring their ability to detect and treat screwworms.
Washington has halted cattle imports from Mexico and invested millions in setting up a new sterile fly production plant in Metapa, Mexico. But it will take roughly a year to come online. So, cattle producers in the U.S. are stockpiling insecticides, making contingency plans and sounding the alarm that a shortage of skilled ranch labor will hamstring their ability to detect and treat screwworms.
https://www.reuters.com/world/texas-cattle-country-ranchers-brace-flesh-eating-screwworms-2025-08-15/
btw, permethrin which is the usual insecticide sprayed on animals runs about $125-150 per gallon for the concentrate. 64 oz. makes about 400 gallons of the spray for applying directly on animals, so each American cattle rancher would have to have a very large supply to keep spraying their herds. Plus very time consuming unless you can run the herd through some kind of gated system with an automated sprayer. The good news is that cattle numbers are relatively low so treating them is a little easier. The bad news is that the cattle numbers are relatively low which keeps beef prices high for the consumer.
https://agrilifetoday.tamu.edu/2024/02/07/u-s-beef-cattle-herd-smallest-since-1951/
That’s going to make all beef seem like Wagyu beef.
https://www.valleyvet.com/ct_detail.html?pgguid=71f6b1b9-8ecf-426e-bdd9-c69009d9b1bb&ccd=IMS009&grp=F000&grpc=UUUU&grpsc=UUUU&sp=m&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=MCAT%20Fly%20Lice%20(F000)%20MGPM%20PDP%20(IMS009)&utm_term=MGPM%20Fly%20And%20Lice%20Control%20(F000)%20free&utm_content=MCAT%20Fly%20Lice%20(F000)%20MGPM%20PDP%20Free%20Shipping%20(DSA)
Of course, it’s tariffs that are raising the price of beef, certainly not a teensy fly or recurring drought, right? Oh, wait. We can’t import infected cattle. Darn.
You have repeatedly claimed that screwworms HAVE CAUSED U.S. beef prices to rise. NOW you recognize that we don’t have screwworms in our cattle herds, and I only had to tell you twice.
So here you are, pretending to be an expert. Same old Brucie.
Cattle imports from Mexico are about
a) 3 1/2 % of what we produce domestically,
b) about 1/3 of our total imports,
c) about 50% more than our total exports
Cattle is very largely a domestic thing, and a “teensy fly” in Mexico won’t have much impact on it.
Beef, on the other hand, is a bigger deal. We import about 20% of our total beef, roughly, and substantial tariffs on that would indeed affect beef prices. Let’s compare those two numbers again – 3 1/2% (cattle imports from Mexico) and 20% (beef imports from everywhere, largely Latin America.) See the difference?
Just in case Brucie is tempted to slip another distortion into the screwworm story, I’ll point out that screwworm is endemic in South and Central America.
As you point out,we get gobs of beef from the rest of the Americas. Here’s the thing – the fact that screwworm has been endemic down there for long ger than we’ve been importing from down there means…no change. Screwworm is not a big factor in the rising cost of imported beef because screwworm has always been there.
The case in Mexico is different, but only slightly. Screwworm is endemic in much of Mexico, but not along the U.S. border. It has been migrating North. This has two implications for the U.S. One is that we have stopped 3 1/2% of our imports, while imposing tariffs up to 50% on the rest of our imports. The other is that U.S. ranchers MAY have to pay to disinfect their cattle. But not yet.
So, without doing any math, Brucie pretends that tariffs aren’t the reason that beef, coffee, fresh fruits, fresh vegetables and meth are more expensive. Your consumption basket may vary.
” sounding the alarm that a shortage of skilled ranch labor will hamstring their ability to detect and treat screwworms.”
just going to point out, the poor policies directed to the migrant labor pool is not helping the ability of these ranches to acquire and keep skilled ranch labor. that drives up wages, and costs to americans.
i can no longer buy a value meal in houston for under $10. on a personal note, this keeps me from buying and thus results in a healthier diet at lower cost. but this is a direct result of both tariffs and migrant hunting by ice. inflation is steadily and insidiously spreading throughout the economy. trump economic policy, making america poorer one day at a time.
NYTimes has an article on soybean farmers in north dakota. since trump has invoked his trade tariffs on china, they have retaliated by stopping the purchase of soybean from north dakota. stopped cold. and the farms are headed towards foreclosure, because they can no longer sell their product due to trump policies. if this lasts much longer, many family farms will be foreclosed. i would imagine this is the bit of economic pain and suffering that maga Americans believe is permitted in order to promote the trump economic agenda. except those farmers in north dakota thought it would be the “other people” who suffered and lost their farms, not them.
and this follows the first trump administration, whey soybean farmers were beaten up again by trump trade policies. that forced china to import more from brazil, so they are not longer reliant on us soybeans. china has gained leverage and the usa has lost leverage under trump economic leadership. and the farmers of north dakota continue to vote for trump. amazing.
So you’re saying that the Republicans might only get 62% of the vote instead of 67% in the next election, as cognitive dissonance kicks in and somehow it will all be China’s fault, or the Democratic party’s fault, or “stuff beyond anyone’s control”, or…
Sad, really, reading those articles about heavily Latino – Trump voting communities that get hammered by ICE and are still heavily Latino – Trump communities, just mildly less so.
Possibly we’re back to “blipping.” Readers will recall when the late(but never to be lamented) CoRev called the beating being handed out to soybean farmers in the first Trump administration little more than a blip, soon to be rectified by brilliant Trump farm policy. Or eventually , part of $30 Billion in farm bailouts. Blip. A simple word for the simple minded.
My wife and I are true addicts. We will pay nearly any price for arabica coffee from Costa Rica. We buy it something like 10 kilos at a time. Next time, maybe more than that. It’s OK, though. We don’t drink that much because it is so expensive, but we are determined to enjoy what we drink. If we want swill, a big ol’ can of whatever is just fine. Chock Full ‘o Nuts, which is arabica, is the swill of choice. I just finished off a big can and will have to buy some. I’m not looking forward to finding out what it costs now.
got to tour a coffee and cacao farm in costa rica this spring. the coffee was simply delicious. and coupled with some fresh dark chocolate? top notch. but the cost of coffee and cacao is increasing quite a bit over the past couple of years. costa rica really is a beautiful part of the world. as i understand, crime is getting a bit worse recently. caught my first wave there as well!
We visited Costa Rica for the first time last May. The first cup of coffee when we arrived after an overnight flight converted me to Costa Rican coffee on the spot. We didn’t notice crime problems, but then we probably wouldn’t unless we were targets of the crime. And we weren’t. Costa Rica doesn’t have beautiful cities, but the country is stunning and the people are wonderful. You can get an idea about how the people are by the dogs you encounter. Dogs in Costa Rica were calm, friendly, and quiet. There were two aggressive dogs behind fences, but that was it out of a whole lot of dogs. It is a reflection on the way people treat them, which is a reflection on the people themselves. That’s my highly scientific theory about the correlation between dog and human behavior, priced for value.
on the other hand, if you dare to drive through the countryside, beware. especially in the national parks around the volcanos. we chose a driver and van instead, which was only slightly better. the motion sickness from the endless s curves up and down the mountainsides at breakneck speeds. I drove the northwest loop around maui once. that was the only drive less comfortable than Costa Rica, because it included one lane roads on 2000 foot cliffs, with two way traffic! and I had to back up about a quarter mile once to let the other traffic by! the memories still cause nightmares.