{"id":309989,"date":"2025-11-24T02:09:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T02:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/309989\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T02:09:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T02:09:07","slug":"tea-tariffs-once-sparked-a-revolution-now-they-are-creating-angst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/309989\/","title":{"rendered":"Tea Tariffs Once Sparked a Revolution. Now They Are Creating Angst"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>FILE – Owner Lisa McDonald packages loose leaf tea orders at the TeaHaus Thursday, April 24, 2025, in Ann Arbor, Mich. (AP Photo\/Paul Sancya, file)<\/p>\n

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 A tax on tea once sparked rebellion. This time, it\u2019s just causing headaches.<\/p>\n


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Importers of the prized leaves have watched costs climb, orders stall and margins shrink under the weight of President Donald Trump\u2019s tariffs. Now, even after Trump has given them a reprieve, tea traders say it won\u2019t immediately undo the damage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took a while to work its way through the system, these tariffs, and it will take a while for it to work its way out of the system,\u201d says Bruce Richardson, a celebrated tea master, tea historian and purveyor of teas at his shop, Elmwood Inn Fine Teas, in Danville, Kentucky. \u201cThat tariffed tea is still working its way out of our warehouses.\u201d<\/p>\n

While a handful of bigger firms are behind the biggest supermarket brands, the premium tea market is largely the work of smaller businesses, from family farms to specialty importers to a web of little tea shops, tea rooms and tea cafes across the U.S. Amid an onslaught of tariffs, they have become showcases for the levies\u2019 effects.<\/p>\n

On their shelves, selection has narrowed, with some teas now missing because they\u2019re no longer viable products to stock with steep levies on top. In their warehouses, managers are consumed with uncertainty and operational headaches, including calculating what a blend really costs, with ingredients from multiple countries on a roller coaster of tariffs. And in backrooms where the wafting scent of fresh tea permeates, owners have been forced to put off job postings, raises, advertising and other investments so they can have cash available to pay duties when their containers arrive at U.S. ports.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I were to add up all the money I\u2019ve spent on tariffs that weren\u2019t there a year ago, it could equal a new employee,\u201d says Hartley Johnson, who owns the Mark T. Wendell Tea Company in Acton, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s prices used to stay static for a year or longer. He ate the tariff costs before being forced to respond. His most popular tea, a smoky Taiwanese one called Hu-Kwa, has steadily risen from $26 to $46 a pound.<\/p>\n

He knows some customers are reconsidering.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere is that tipping point?\u201d Johnson asks. \u201cI\u2019m kind of finding that tipping point is happening now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Trump backed off some tariffs on agricultural products last week, many in the tea trade are wary of celebrating too soon and caution tea drinkers shouldn\u2019t either. Much of next year\u2019s supply has already been imported and tariffed and the full impact of those duties may not have fully spilled downhill.<\/p>\n

Meantime, other tariff-driven price hikes persist. All sorts of other products tea businesses import, from teapots to infusers, remain subject to levies, and costs for some American-made items, like tins for packaging, have spiked because they rely on foreign materials.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe canisters, the bamboo boxes, the matcha whisks, everything that we import, everything that we sell has been affected by tariffs,\u201d says Gilbert Tsang, owner of MEM Tea Imports in Wakefield, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

Though globally, tea reigns supreme, imbibed more than anything but water, it has long been overshadowed by coffee in the U.S. Still, tea is entwined in American history from the very beginning, even before colonists angry with tariffs dumped tons of it in Boston Harbor.<\/p>\n

Boston may run on Dunkin\u2019 today, but it was born on tea.<\/p>\n

The 1773 revolt that became known as the Boston Tea Party rose out of the British Parliament\u2019s implementation of tea tariffs on colonists, who rejected taxation without representation in government. After an independent United States was born, one of the new government\u2019s first major acts, the Tariff Act of 1789, ironically set in law import taxes on a range of products including tea. In time, though, trade policy came to include carve-outs for many products Americans rely on but don\u2019t produce.<\/p>\n

For more than 150 years, most tea has passed through U.S. ports with little to no duties.<\/p>\n

That began to change in Trump\u2019s first term with his hardline approach to China. But nothing compared to what came with his return to the White House.<\/p>\n

In July, the most recent month for which the U.S. International Trade Commission has tallied tariff numbers, tea was taxed at an average rate of over 12%, a huge increase from a year earlier when it was just under one-tenth of a percent. In that single month, American businesses and consumers paid more than $6 million in tea import taxes, amassing in just 31 days more tariffs than any previous full year on record.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll over again, taxation without representation,\u201d says Richardson, an adviser to the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum. \u201cOur wants and needs and our voices are not being represented because Congress is avoiding the issue by simply allowing the president to act like George III.\u201d<\/p>\n

All told, tea importers paid about $19.6 million in tariffs in the first seven months of 2025, nearly seven times as much as the same period last year.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all been confounding to those steeped in the world of tea, on which the U.S. depends on foreign countries for nearly all of the billions of pounds Americans brew each year. Though a number of small tea farms exist in the U.S., they can\u2019t fill Americans\u2019 cups for more than a few hours of the year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have an industry and we can\u2019t produce one overnight,\u201d says Angela McDonald, president of the United States League of Tea Growers.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s suspension of tea tariffs came too late for some businesses, including Los Angeles-based International Tea Importers Inc., for which tariffs created an untenable cash-flow crunch.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just became over-leveraged financing not just the inventory, but also the tariffs,\u201d says the company\u2019s CEO, Brendan Shah.<\/p>\n

Tariffs weren\u2019t the only thing the 35-year-old business was facing, but without them, Shah says it may have survived.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnpredictable tariff policies,\u201d he wrote to customers in announcing the company\u2019s closure, \u201chave created the final, insurmountable barrier.\u201d<\/p>\n

Follow VINnews for Breaking News Updates<\/p>\n

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