No Coffee Tax Act could cut cost of a cup as Senate aims to curtail Trump tariffs

If you're a coffee drinker, you've probably noticed the price has gone up a lot over the last year

The price per pound has increased from about $6.47 in September 2024 to about $9.14 in September 2025

That's a 41% increase. So Senators Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat, and Rand Paul, a Republican

introduced a bill called the No Coffee Tax Act that would end all tariffs on coffee imports

It's one of multiple steps the Senate is taking to try to rein in tariffs President Trump has imposed this year on goods imported from pretty much the entire world

More than 99 percent of coffee sold in the United States is imported

35 percent of it is from Brazil and another 27 percent from Colombia

The tariffs on imports from those countries are 50 percent and 10 percent respectively

We do not grow coffee here in the number of the abundance that we need here for Americans, for the consumption that we have

So this is one that's just common sense. We have never put tariffs on it before. And why are we doing it now

The bill reverts all tariffs on coffee back to what they were the day before President Trump took office, which is zero

Talking to those small businesses, those coffee niche businesses, they're going to go under

They can't afford, they have a small profit margin, they can't afford more of these costs. So now we're going to put these small businesses out of business

The jobs are not going to be there. Economy is not going to expand in Nevada. That's not what we want

So we've got to be smart. The No Coffee Tax Act was introduced Wednesday the day after the Senate voted to end Trump tariffs on goods imported from Brazil The vote was bipartisan with five Republicans joining Democrats to get it over the line It unlikely to have any effect however It really a messaging exercise I don expect the House to pass it out And it one of the

reasons why I voted on the Brazil measure. That one's an outlier. I can almost see why the

president is using some of the authorities for the taking on nations where we have a trade

deficit, but not a nation with a trade surplus. In 2024, the United States ran a trade surplus

with Brazil of $6.8 billion on goods and $23.1 billion on services. Trump imposed the 50

tariff on the country in July after the country's Supreme Court took action against its former

president, Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally, and also sanctioned U.S. social media companies

restricting their access to the Brazilian market. You just don't impose a 50% tariff on a country

because you disagree with a judicial outcome. Respectfully to the president, let's go after the bad actors, not nations with the trade surplus

Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky also voted to end tariffs on Brazil

and called Trump's policy an indiscriminate trade war against both close allies and strategic adversaries

The Senate is also voting this week to end tariffs on Canadian products

and other global tariffs President Trump implemented by declaring a national emergency

although just like the resolution regarding tariffs in Brazil, they're not likely to take effect

I'm Ray Bogan for Straight Arrow News. For more unbiased reporting straight from our nation's capital, download the SAN app