While perusing some coffee to buy from my favourite roaster that also is extremely transparent about pricing, this caught my eye:
$7.35 USD per lb including $0.65 USD per lb “reciprocal” tariff placed on Ethiopian imports. * This coffee entered the US before being imported into Canada.
Hm. Seems the niche importer they worked with to access these particular beans was American. Since we’re a small market, I suspect this kind of thing is going to be happening a lot.
I got an initial take from an LLM and apparently the company importing from Ethiopia and re-exporting to Subtext is eligible for a refund on the duty (a “drawback”) but a big, um, drawback of that is that it’s fairly onerous:
- Many importers use a drawback specialist or broker because the paperwork is complex; fees are usually contingency-based (e.g. 20–30% of the recovered duty).
- For small, irregular shipments, filing costs often outweigh the refund, so many small importers simply don’t bother.
- For large distributors or commodities with steady re-export flows, drawback is routine and worthwhile.
Curious if anyone has similar anecdotes or run across an attempt to quantify this sort of trade flow and effect of US tariffs? I wonder if the impact of this across every little thing adds up to a meaningful amount of inflation?
Fuck the US and buy from local roaster. Lots of roasters and they have same day or next day shipping!
This is from my favourite small roaster in my Canadian city. They’re one of the only ones that give this kind of detail, almost all others I would have had no idea any Americans were involved in the process and might have bought these without realising as you undoubtedly buy from Canadian businesses with some US suppliers. Which is why I figured it might be an interesting topic for a post.
The beans are never from Canada.
I know that! Beans come from Africa, latin American and so on. I guess there are importers in Canada, which then distribute local and the shops roast them.
Yes, sorry, I guess that was kind of insulting. That we’re not getting produce or tropical products locally seems to be something Lemmings regularly miss, though. Like, I had people claim to me they were buying all hyper-local food in the dead of winter, which, bullshit unless you have details about living on cans, bread and animal products like the old-timers talk about.
OP was using a local brand, who apparently have a supply chain that goes through the US and are having trouble moving it it.
I am willing to pay more not to buy from states. It’s about not pricing for me, it’s not supporting a now fascist country run by a fascist child rapist felon. Even if they vote him out or he kicks the bucket I will never support the states again in my life.
So many people missing the point here.
Yes, sometimes it’s easier to ship something via the US than not. Presumably, a lot of work is being done behind the scenes to undo that, but it’s hard.
Coffee isn’t really something to judge on, there’s a bunch of factors for why coffee has spiked recently and it’s more to do with a bad harvest than anything around tariffs. There’s plenty of roasters in Canada that buy direct.
I’m not talking about the overall price of coffee, that’s merely what caused me to think about the tariff affecting us via intermediaries thanks to Subtext’s unusual level of transparency in disclosing it. I would have assumed tariffs wouldn’t apply and found it interesting that, while sorta true in theory, in reality it may not be practical for small scale shipments. This roaster buys direct much of the time also, you can try their stuff without supporting Americans.
Kicking horse is good. Maybe look at local roasters.
Right, but if the beans they roast come through the US, then locally roasted beans will still have American tariffs applied, and it’s often not worth applying to get a refund. The goods were not for final sale in the US, the tariffs don’t apply, but the paperwork is more onerous than the refund, for smaller businesses. That’s the point.
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Kicking Horse is an Italian company now, bought by Lavazza.
I wonder if that’s why their huge presence at the grocery store after the Tangerine Twat started attacking Canada has all but completely dried up. The only option I saw for Kicking Horse last time out was small bags of pre-ground coffee. No more whole beans and no more variety of blends etc.
I personally get mine from a local roaster.
