Roasters, cafés and supermarket shoppers across the United States are feeling the pinch as coffee prices climb amid a rare combination of trade and climate shocks. New tariffs on certain coffee imports, coupled with poor harvests in major producing countries, have tightened global supplies and pushed wholesale bean costs higher, with impacts now filtering through to retail prices and menus.

Coffee is a globally traded commodity dominated by a handful of producers. Brazil and Vietnam together account for roughly half of global output, and weather disruptions in either country quickly reverberate through world markets. This year, producers reported lower yields after unseasonably warm and dry conditions in parts of Brazil and periodic storms in Southeast Asia, reducing the volume of exportable beans and raising the proportion of lower-quality lots that command weaker prices. At the same time, tariffs imposed on selected imports into the United States have increased landed costs for green beans, amplifying the inflationary effect of the crop shortfalls.

Wholesale brokers and industry participants say the combined effect has translated into double-digit percentage increases in costs for some grades of green coffee since late last year. Those increases are being passed on to roasters and, in turn, to consumers. The price of a cup of coffee at many chains and independent outlets has already risen, and supermarket roast-and-ground brands are expected to follow. For an industry in which margins are thin and price competition intense, even modest input shocks can impose painful trade-offs between absorbing costs and raising prices.

The spike matters beyond caffeine. Coffee is a significant line item in the food-and-beverage market and, in aggregate, contributes to measures of consumer inflation. A sustained rise in coffee costs would keep pressure on the food component of the Consumer Price Index and could complicate Federal Reserve assessments of underlying inflation trends, even if the overall share of coffee in household spending is small compared with housing or energy. For businesses, higher coffee costs amplify broader input-price pressures already felt across foodservice, where labor and rent remain major fixed expenditures.

Policy responses are limited but consequential. Congress could consider tariff relief or targeted exemptions to ease near-term import costs, and the administration can negotiate with trading partners to secure supply or reduce trade frictions. The U.S. Department of Agriculture also has programs to support farm resilience that lawmakers might expand to address supply-side shocks in agricultural commodities globally. Any policy move, however, involves trade-offs among domestic producers, importers and broader trade policy objectives.

Beyond the immediate shock, the episode underscores longer-term trends: climate-driven yield volatility, concentration of production in a few countries, and the sensitivity of global supply chains to trade policy. For consumers, businesses and policymakers, the current price spike is a reminder that commodity markets can move quickly and that the economic costs of weather and trade disruptions are not easily contained. Managers in the coffee sector are likely to reassess procurement strategies, hedging and inventory buffers, while policymakers face pressure to balance trade policy goals with near-term consumer price stability.