HELENA — Unfavorable growing conditions in coffee-producing countries have pushed up the price of the popular bean. Add in concerns over possible tariffs, and your favorite roaster or coffee shop is faced with raising the cost of your morning cup.
“One thing that is difficult, specifically for coffee, is it is a commodity good that we cannot grow here, and so we have to import it," said Steven Ladefoged, the owner of Montago Coffee in Helena.
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Initially, a ten percent tariff was placed on coffee by the Trump administration.
Last month, the administration also proposed higher tariffs on imports from countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, and India, initially aiming for rates between 26 and 46 percent.
Currently, under Trump's policies, the average effective tariff rate for coffee sits at around 18 percent.
“It is really hard to know what to expect with these tariffs," Ladefoged said. "It has definitely impacted coffee drastically, and it kind of depends day to day on when those cargo ships hit the states.”
Montago Coffee sources beans from countries across Central and South America, Asia, and Africa.
The shop goes through about 15,000 pounds of beans a year and says recently a full pallet of coffee has increased by $2,000.
Ladefoged said, “It is a big challenge because small businesses do not have a lot of capital to be able to just plan for their expenses going up by thousands of dollars and that is a big barrier and is scary for a lot of us.”
However, the state of tariffs has not been the only impact on the purchase price and selling price.
Growing conditions in large coffee-producing countries like Brazil and Vietnam are also negatively impacting small coffee businesses.
“Within the last year, coffee market prices have gone up about one hundred percent, and that is due to a lot of different factors, climate change being one of them,” said Ladefoged..
This has led shops like Montago to increase their prices slightly to make it feasible to remain open.
