Experts Reveal Exactly How Trump’s Tariffs Will Affect Food Prices — Particularly On Coffee

If you didn’t understand it before, you will now.

Over the past month, President Donald Trump has instilled high tariffs on countries like China, Canada and Mexico while sparking a trade war with China. He paused some tariffs for 90 days, but the damage has already been done.

For the first time in U.S. history, the government has placed a blanket 10% tariff on every single country, which Michael Coon, an associate professor of economics at the University of Tampa, calls “unusual.”

“The only place you really see something like that is in lower-income countries that don’t have the infrastructure to collect income taxes,” Coon told HuffPost. “It’s easier for them to collect tariffs at the port because you have to set up a customs office on the dock.”

But what exactly are tariffs, and how do they affect the cost of the groceries you buy in your everyday life?

“Tariffs are basically a tax on imported goods,” Coon said. “It’s very similar to a sales tax. Anything we import from any other country is going to cost 10% more. On Mexico and Canada, we have a 25% tariff on most goods, and so that would raise prices by 25%. And Canada and Mexico are two of our biggest trading partners.”