Editors at National Review Online offer the president advice about his tariff policy.
President Trump has an affordability agenda to address rising coffee prices: He’s rolling back his coffee tariffs.
The move is part of a bigger action exempting more than a hundred common food items from his so-called reciprocal tariffs, including beef, fruits, spices, and nuts.
The price of coffee in the U.S. has gone up nearly 20 percent over the past year and is at record levels. Weather issues in Brazil and Vietnam have been a major factor, but Trump’s tariffs have also put upward pressure on prices. …
… The coffee tariffs are a function of the president’s abiding belief that tariffs are, by definition, good. It is true that they generate revenue — taxes tend to do that — but at the cost of higher prices for consumers. The administration has been at pains to deny the latter part of that equation, but, under pressure to do something about prices after the Democratic victories in the off-year elections, it is now admitting the obvious. …
… The grocers are pleased. “Today’s action should help consumers, whose morning cup of coffee will hopefully become more affordable, as well as U.S. manufacturers, which utilize many of these products in their supply chains and production lines,” the head of an industry group observed when the move was announced.
It would behoove the administration to apply this logic more broadly. By one estimate, tariffs are costing the average American household roughly $1,800 this year, while more than half of tariffed goods are used to make products here in the United States. It is true that China — a predatory power hostile to the U.S. — is a special case and that threatening tariffs can be a way to gain leverage in negotiations, but arguably Trump’s most significant economic initiative has been to increase prices on consumers after winning a campaign on the promise that he’d lower them.
