Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senators Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) introduced the bipartisan No Coffee Tax Act to repeal President Donald Trump’s tariffs on coffee and lower costs for consumers. More than 99 percent of all coffee in the United States is imported.
“I have said from the beginning: there’s a smart way to use tariffs to help support American businesses and workers, but taxing your morning cup of coffee isn’t it,” said Senator Cortez Masto. “This coffee tax doesn’t help American business in any serious way, but it does raise costs at the grocery store for hardworking families across the United States. It’s past time to end Trump’s coffee tax.”
“The United States doesn’t grow coffee and taxing it won’t create a single American job. What it will do is raise prices for families and small businesses because the president is using an emergency declaration as an excuse to raise taxes. The Constitution is clear about where taxing power belongs, and it isn’t in the Oval Office. Tariffs are taxes, and no president has the authority to raise taxes on a whim. We must follow the Constitution and stop treating it like a suggestion,” said Dr. Rand Paul.
Coffee production is not an industry the U.S. can reasonably onshore, and the U.S. is the largest importer of coffee in the world. Brazil, the top source for U.S. coffee imports, has faced a 50% tariff under the Trump administration’s tariff policy, contributing to a surge in prices. U.S. retail coffee prices increased by nearly 21% in August compared to the same month last year. The No Coffee Tax Act will bring coffee tariffs back to the level they were the day before Trump took office. That level was 0% on everything other than coffee substitutes containing coffee.
Read the full bill here. Companion legislation has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Congressmen Don Bacon (R-Neb.-02) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.-17).
Senator Cortez Masto has continued to push the Trump Administration to address the impacts of Trump’s tariffs on working families and Nevada small businesses, including Nevada coffee shops. During a Senate Finance Committee hearing, Cortez Masto pressed USTR Greer about the impacts of President Trump’s blanket tariffs on Nevadans, particularly those employed in the tourism and hospitality industry. The Senator introduced the Tariff Transparency Act to require the U.S. International Trade Commission to publicly investigate how Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada would impact the American people.
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