After a pitch for 50-year mortgages that seemingly went over like a lead balloon, President Donald Trump's team took another swing at lowering prices for Americans and making them feel better about his handling of the economy with this: US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday that consumers should expect a "substantial" announcement to lower costs of imported food.
Coffee, bananas and other fruit were on the list of items he said prices would decrease -- as Americans grapple with buying groceries after President Donald Trump's tariffs.
Trump said in an earlier interview as well that "we're going to lower some tariffs, we're going to have some coffee come in." Brazil is where most of our coffee comes from, along with Guatemala, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Honduras. In recent months, all of them have faced an additional 10-to 15-percent tariff.
The Press-Democrat noted the average U.S. price of a pound of ground coffee hit $9.14 in September, a 3% increase from the August average of $8.87 and 41% higher than in September 2024, according to U.S. government figures. Coffee prices have been increasing sharply since the start of this year.
In September, a bipartisan group of U.S. House members introduced a bill that would repeal all tariffs on coffee -- and then got sidelined by budget negotiations and a shutdown that's just now starting to show signs of ending.
“We only produce 1% of the coffee that Americans consume. It’s one of the best examples of Trump’s blanket tariffs making no economic sense,” U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, said. Khanna co-sponsored the bill with U.S. Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican.