(Official editorial of the Times-Picayune/Advocate, Oct. 8)
Now that better relations are percolating between President Donald Trump and Brazilian President Luiz Inàcio Lula da Silva, Louisiana’s legislative delegation should urge Trump to eliminate massive tariffs on Brazilian goods — including coffee, which is a key commodity shipped through Louisiana ports.
Trump has imposed an extra 40% tariff, on top of his standard 10%, on Brazilian goods. Those levies are particularly damaging to Louisiana because coffee is the largest containerized import at the Port of New Orleans, with 42% of those beans coming from Brazil. As reporter Anthony McAuley wrote in these pages, the cost of wholesale Arabica beans rose from $1.20 per pound before the pandemic to a record high of $4.40 now, with a significant portion of the increase due to the tariff.
Louisiana coffee traders say their finances are suddenly precarious, as it is they, not Brazil, who actually must pay the tariff. Such businesses typically operate on thin margins, which the tariffs are squeezing or even obliterating.
“We’ve been around for decades, but nothing in our experience compares to this moment,” said Matt Madary, head of the half-century-old International Coffee Corp., a major Metairie-based wholesale trader. “Every day is a new calculation. We’re constantly weighing prices, shipping delays and now the legal landscape. It’s exhausting.”
The good news, of a sort, is that Trump’s tariff decisions are mercurial. He blitzed Brazil’s imports, even though the U.S. actually runs a hefty trade surplus with Brazil, because he didn’t like the prosecution of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Now, though, current President Lula has established a relationship with Trump, and after an Oct. 6 phone call, Trump said they soon would meet in person. Lula’s office said Lula specifically asked for the removal of the 40% tariff.
This is now a good time for Louisiana’s congressional delegation to weigh in. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Benton, and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, are the key agents of Trump’s agenda, and the other Republican members of the delegation all seem to be in Trump’s good graces. They should be perfectly placed to prevail upon Trump that his Brazilian tariffs are harming American importers and costing jobs at ports, retailers and roasting companies right here in Louisiana, not to mention forcing price hikes for coffee nationwide.
The last thing Trump needs politically is consumers nationally angry at him for exorbitantly priced cups of joe.
Also, it is worth noting that the U.S. and Brazil are the West’s two largest democracies, and that a united front with Brazil could help Trump counter the communists in Venezuela and the crisis of political violence in Haiti — where the U.S. is leading United Nations efforts to combat gangs, and where Brazil in the past has put boots on the ground to assist.
