That’s Jason Miller, supply chain expert at MSU, noting 40% tariff to remain on Brazilian coffee (and other) exports to the United States, according to ABCNews.
Figure 1: Import price of green bean coffee, n.s.a. (blue), PPI for coffee, n.s.a. (green), price for ground coffee (tan), all in logs, 2025M04=0. Source: BLS via FRED, and author’s calculations.
Off topic – UK tax policy wobble:
Starmer’s government has decided against hiking taxes, decidung instead to continue suppressing government workers’ wages. The result, when the announcement was made on Friday, was a 13 basis point increase in the ten-year gilt rate:
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/government-bond-yield
The priced-in exprctation for BOE policy rates shifted upward, as well.
The taxes which had been envisioned would have been mostly on the rich. The increase in interest rates is on the economy as a whole. A Labour government eschews tax increases and imposes real wage cuts. The market punishes them. Seems like a mini Labour version of thr Liz Trust fiasco. Who rewards Labour for this? Whom do they serve? Certainly not labor.
By the way, Picketty’s new book has a pretty convincing explanation for why Labour has abandoned labor. Same explanation goes for Democrats.
Starmer may as well be LeFarge’s campaign manager.
Secretary Bessant on tariffs today: “This is one of President Trump’s signature policies, and traditionally the Supreme Court does not interfere with a president’s signature policy.”
He must be referring to the little known “Signature Policy Clause” of the Constitution that allows a president to ignore any law if he declares that law to be an obstacle to
a “signature policy.”
Off topic – higher earners’ budgets:
A new Harris poll finds that nearly 1/3 of six-figure earners are feeling financially stretched. I can’t find a link to post, but the pdf will pop right up if you query “harris income paradox survey”.
The press has picked it up pretty widely, some doing a better job than others. Here’s a particularly bad example:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/11/14/americans-with-six-figure-incomes-in-survival-mode/87253991007/
The “surprising result” that USAToday is pushing boils down to the fact that above-average earners don’t all behave the same, and that some of them have tight budgets. A price shock to anyone who is already spending most of what they earn means trouble, without much reference to how much they earn. What’s that old quote about income above spending, happy life and so on?
This “high earners suffering” business is certainly not new. You can find similar reporting over the years.
What’s missing from the survey is any comparison over time. We can’t know whether above-average earners are more stressed now than at other times, and for the purposes of analysis, that what mostly matters. It’s not a stretch to think they are, but that’s just guessing.
the reprieve comes with a drop in interest rates. when you have a million dollar mortgage, a 1% or 2% drop in rates has a significant impact on take home pay.
More from Secretary Bessent: “I don’t think this ruling is going to go against us, but if it does, what’s (the Supreme Court’s) plan for refunds? Because how is this going to get to consumers? Are they just going to hand some of these importers big windfalls?”
Wait a minute. Bessent has been telling us for months that consumers aren’t paying for the tariffs. Now he says that somehow the tariff refunds have to go back to consumers who didn’t pay them? So, was he lying before or is he lying now?
And as for refunding to importers, that should be easy because it is the importers who have written and signed the checks to the treasury for the tariffs so Bessent knows exactly who and how much each importer paid.
Just as before it was up to the importer how much of the tariff cost to pass on to consumers, it will be up to the importer to decide how much of the tariff refunds to pass on to the consumer. As before, this will be decided by business competition.
This is analogous to the felon-in-chief demanding that the courts explain how food stamps will be paid for with the food stamp reserve fund. The Supreme Court brought this on themselves.
Yet more from Secretary Bessent on the high price of beef. Believe it or not, he blames it on “infected immigrant cows” from Mexico. Yes, it’s not just immigrant humans, it’s immigrant cows that are a national security threat.
I can’t wait to see the Puppy Killer’s goons rounding up all the Hispanic-looking cows. It will be like an episode of Rawhide with Noem riding her horse in the Clint Eastwood role.
Bessent claims to be a soybean farmer. I suppose he can be an expert on the cattle industry also, as a side hustle.