Remember tariffs? It’s only been a year but in the dog time that is our current hellscape that’s like three lifetimes ago. In case you need a refresher, in April of last year, the US government issued a global “Liberation Day” tariff of 10% on all imported goods, including coffee, of which the United States is the largest importer. Then in July, a 50% tariff was implemented on Brazil and the roughly $1.9 billion in coffee imported from the country. It pretty much sent the entire global coffee industry into disarray.
The major criticism of the tariffs is that they are essentially a tax on Americans. Exporting countries pay the added fee up front but then pass them on, trickling down to the buyers. In the case of coffee this went from the coffee importers to the roasters and then ultimately to the consumers.
In February of 2026, the conservative super-majority Supreme Court voted by a margin of 6–3 that these reciprocal tariffs were unconstitutional and outside the president’s power. Which resulted in the administration having to unwind the tariffs collective, believed to be over $100 billion. Now, those tariffs, known as the IEEPA tariff (named after the International Emergency Economic Powers Act that the Supreme Court ruled the president was abusing) are starting to trickle out. And major specialty coffee importers are passing those refunds onto the roasters.
The unwinding of the tariffs was the first but ultimately incomplete step in getting the money back where it belongs. Since the importers were ultimately the ones paying the tariffs—that then got passed on—they are the only ones eligible for a refund. They have no legal obligation to divvy them out to those who paid the increased price of good due to the tariffs. But some importers are doing it anyway.
At the end of June, Royal Coffee announced they would be issuing credits to customers who purchased green coffee from them that came with an additional tariff. The tariffs on a total of 927 lots have been returned and will be pro-actively applied to the accounts of those who purchased any part of them, and another 117 are still in the works.
Then at the beginning of July, Atlas Coffee Importers announced they would be following suit. Per the announcement, they were still in the process of reconciling shipments with buyers in order to refund accordingly. And earlier this week, Cafe Imports announced on Instagram that they have received a refund on 2025 tariffs that they would also be passing on to customers. Like with the other two importers, Cafe Imports is proactively working to return the fees; no requests are required from roasters.
Of course, none of this gets the money further down the food chain, to the consumers, which is itself a near impossible task. How much of the price of that latte that you purchased is due to tariffs is itself a difficult question, to say nothing of how cafes would go about returning it.
Royal is taking a stab at it at least. At their Oakland cafe, The Crown, they are reducing the price of drinks by 25 cents for 60 days, “reflecting the roughly $2,500 in IEEPA duties paid on the coffee it served during the affected period.”
It’s hard to call it a happy ending, but it at least heartening to see businesses doing the right thing without any mandate to do so. Roasters can reach out directly to the importers for more information about tariff refunds.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
