No Coffee Tax Act could cut cost of a cup as Senate aims to curtail Trump tariffs
The Senate is taking multiple votes this week to end worldwide tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump, but none will impact Americans in need of a pick-me-up more than the No Coffee Tax Act. The newly introduced bill would revert all tariffs on coffee back to what they were the day before Trump took office: zero percent.
The bipartisan legislation was introduced by Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., and Rand Paul, R-Ky.
“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,” Paul said in a statement.
Rising prices
The price of a pound of coffee has increased from about $6.47 in September 2024 to $9.14 in September 2025, a 41% increase.
More than 99% of coffee sold in the United States is imported — 35% of it from Brazil and another 27% from Colombia. The tariffs on imports from those countries are 50% and 10% respectively.
“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,” Cortez Masto said.
Masto is concerned that small coffee businesses with thin profit margins could go under due to the tariffs.
“They can’t afford more of these costs. So now we’re going to put these small businesses out of business,” Cortez Masto said. “The jobs are not going to be there, the economy is not going to expand in Nevada, that’s not what we want. So we’ve got to be smart.”
The senators introduced the No Coffee Tax Act on Wednesday, the day after the Senate voted to end Trump’s tariffs on goods imported from Brazil. The vote was bipartisan, with five Republicans joining Democrats to get it over the line.
Little substance?
It is, however, unlikely to have any effect.
“It’s really a messaging exercise. I don’t expect the House to pass it out, and it’s one of the reasons why I voted on the Brazil measure,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told reporters. “I can almost see why the president is using some of the authorities for taking on nations where we have a trade deficit, but not a nation with a trade surplus.”
In 2024, the United States ran a $6.8 billion trade surplus with Brazil on goods and $23.1 billion on services. Trump imposed a 50% tariff on the country in July after the country’s supreme court took action against former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally, and also sanctioned U.S. social media companies, restricting their access to the Brazilian market.
“You just don’t impose a 50% tariff on a country because you disagree with the judicial outcome,” Tillis said. “Respectfully to the president, let’s go after the bad actors, not nations with the trade surplus.”
Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., also voted to end the tariffs on Brazil and called Trump’s policy an “indiscriminate trade war against both close allies and strategic adversaries.”
The Senate is also voting this week on ending tariffs on Canadian imports, as well as other general global tariffs that Trump imposed by declaring a national emergency. Like the resolution pertaining to Brazil, they won’t take effect without House approval.
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
