For a lot of guys who start the day with a strong cup of joe and maybe treat themselves to a chocolate bar after a long shift, the past couple of years have hit the wallet harder than expected. Coffee up nearly 20 percent. Bananas creeping higher every time you hit the grocery aisle. Even the price of a simple Hershey bar or bag of M&M’s has been climbing. A lot of folks figured tariffs were part of the problem, but the Trump administration just rolled out some new trade moves that could actually turn that around—at least on a few everyday items we all buy.
On November 13, the White House put out word that fresh agreements with Guatemala, El Salvador, and Ecuador should start bringing down what Americans pay for bananas, coffee, and chocolate. The catch? The big baseline tariff numbers aren’t changing—10 percent stays on Guatemala and El Salvador, 15 percent on Ecuador—but the deals carve out exceptions for things the United States simply can’t grow or make enough of at home.
A senior administration official laid it out plain: bananas and cocoa from Ecuador, coffee plus textiles and apparel from Guatemala, those specific products will get a pass from the extra “reciprocal” tariffs President Trump slapped on earlier. In other words, the punishment duties that were jacking up costs on goods we have no choice but to import are getting rolled back on the stuff that ends up in your mug and your kids’ Halloween buckets.
The same day, another deal landed with Argentina. That one opens their market wider to American cattle and poultry—good news for ranchers and chicken farmers here—and makes sure U.S. tech companies and digital products don’t get treated unfairly down there.
Word had been leaking out for days that the administration was hunting for ways to ease the bite on fruit and coffee prices. President Trump himself said it straight up on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show back on November 10: “Coffee, we’re going to lower some tariffs. We’re going to have some coffee come in.”
Anyone who’s filled a shopping cart lately knows why that matters. According to the latest consumer price index numbers, coffee jumped 19 percent in the year leading up to September. Bananas rose 7 percent in the same stretch. Cocoa—the key ingredient in everything chocolate—has been driving candy prices through the roof too. Industry people say wholesalers and retailers have had no choice but to pass those higher import costs along.
The administration is quick to point out that not all of the price surge comes from tariffs. Take coffee: the world’s biggest producer, Brazil, got hammered by a brutal drought that shrank harvests long before any new duties kicked in. Bad weather in Vietnam and other growing regions didn’t help either. Still, the U.S. slapped a heavy 50 percent tariff on Brazil over the summer because of their legal fight with former President Jair Bolsonaro, and Colombia—another major coffee source—has been sitting under a 10 percent tariff. When you import 99 percent of the coffee Americans drink (that’s the stat from the National Coffee Association), every extra percentage point stings.
Trump officials insist the broader tariffs aren’t a hidden tax on consumers the way critics claim. The senior official talking to reporters put it this way: to whatever extent retailers have been tacking tariff costs onto shelf prices, these new framework agreements should give them room to back off and keep more money in shoppers’ pockets.
Inflation overall has cooled a little—September’s rate came in slightly below August’s—but prices are still running about 3 percent higher than they were a year ago. For most working families, the economy and the cost of living stay at the very top of the worry list, month after month.
So will you actually notice the difference the next time you grab a bunch of bananas or refill the coffee canister? It’ll probably take a few months for the lower import costs to work through the supply chain, but the administration is betting these targeted rollbacks will start showing up where it counts: lower prices on some of the simple pleasures a lot of us count on to get through the day.
At a time when every trip to the store feels like a budget meeting, any break on the price of a decent cup of coffee or a chocolate bar that doesn’t require a second mortgage is welcome news. Whether it’s enough to offset everything else that’s gone up remains to be seen, but for the moment, the guy who likes his morning brew strong and his candy bars affordable finally has reason to think relief might be on the way.
