Freshly picked coffee cherries are washed at a farm in Santa María, Colombia. Thomas O’Neill/NurPhoto hide caption
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Thomas O’Neill/NurPhoto
POPAYÁN, Colombia — In the Colombian city of Popayán, an auction is getting underway, with roasters bidding for specialty coffees that are sold in lots of 200 to 300 pounds.
One of the lots has notes of cherries and almonds and sells for $10.50 a pound, three times the regular price for Colombian coffee. Another lot of coffee, with scents of tea leaves, fetches $30 a pound.
The coffee experts bidding for these beans come mostly from the United States. And they haven’t just come to this bucolic town in the Andes mountains for specialty coffee. They’re also after standard beans that they can use in their blends.
“As a company, we’re looking for alternatives for coffee from Brazil,” said Scott Peterson, a buyer for True Coffee Roasters, a small roaster from Wisconsin. Peterson said it was his first time in Colombia.
“We don’t want to damage our relationships with Brazilian producers,” he said. “But we do need to look elsewhere and see how we can mitigate some of the costs that we’ll be paying.”
A coffee auction in Colombia. A 50% U.S. tax on Brazilian imports has increased the demand for Colombian coffee. Manuel Rueda/NPR hide caption
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Manuel Rueda/NPR
In August, a 50% tax on Brazilian coffee imports came into effect in the United States. The new tariff has jolted coffee markets and sent American roasters scrambling for alternatives.
Ted Stachura of California roaster Equator Coffees said that earlier this year his company imported two containers of coffee from Brazil, which carried around 90,000 pounds of beans in total. Now he is suspending future purchases from Brazil and says he will look to other origins to replace the Brazilian beans that are used in the company’s blends.
“It’s difficult to replace that exact flavor profile of Brazil,” he told NPR. “But as coffee professionals, it’s our job to be able to finesse the components in our blends to get them to taste more or less the same.”
Sean Donnelly, from Mighty Oak Coffee, bids for a lot of specialty coffee in Popayán, Colombia, on Aug. 16. Manuel Rueda/NPR hide caption
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Manuel Rueda/NPR
Stachura said the tariffs are “unfair” to roasters, coffee growers and U.S. consumers, who will likely have to buy more expensive coffee that will have a slightly different flavor.
The tariffs on coffee, as well as on many other Brazilian goods, were first announced in July by President Trump, who described these import taxes as an effort to “rectify the grave injustices” that have been committed against former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro — a Trump ally who has been charged with treason in Brazil.
Stachura, who has been in the coffee industry for more than two decades, said that U.S. roasters have long depended on Brazilian coffee for their blends, because it is relatively cheap and has a smooth and nutty flavor that Americans have become accustomed to.
In 2023, the last year for which public figures are available, the U.S. imported 35% of its coffee from Brazil.
“There is no other origin that has the dynamics of supply that Brazil has, in terms of moving big volumes, throughout the year,” said Thiago Marquez, a Brazilian coffee exporter whose company, Cazarini Trading, has sent up to 45 million pounds of coffee to the United States per year.
But for many U.S. roasters, the 50% tariff means that using Brazilian coffee is no longer a viable option.
Colombian goods were hit with only a 10% tariff in April, when Trump announced his new tariff scheme. That has turned Colombia into a more attractive market for U.S. coffee roasters.
Austin Caleb, a buyer with South Carolina roaster Methodical Coffee, said that his company still has some Brazilian coffee in stock. But slowly, they will replace it with beans from Colombia’s Huila province.
“I think a lot of buyers can find a lot of diversity in all the different microregions in Colombia,” he said.
Corey Liam, of Chicago roaster Metropolis Coffee, inspects a leaf during a visit to a coffee farm outside Popayán. Manuel Rueda/NPR hide caption
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Manuel Rueda/NPR
Some Colombian growers say they’re already noticing a spike in demand. Wilton Benitez runs the Granja Paraíso farm outside Popayán. He’s now sending 45,000 pounds of coffee to the United States each month — three times more than last year. “In the short term, this will be a good opportunity to position Colombian coffee in the U.S.,” he said.
But analysts say that all this extra demand could also drive up coffee prices in Colombia, as well as other countries with low tariffs, making a spike in coffee prices inevitable. “I think people’s habits will change,” said Sean Capistrant, a trader for Trabocca, a Dutch company that supplies U.S. roasters with around 4 million pounds of coffee each year. “You’ll see consumers going back to buying lower-cost coffees and making it at home to save money.”
That pressure could ease if Trump makes exemptions for Brazilian coffee in his tariff scheme, as he already has for Brazilian products like orange juice, gold and airplane parts.
At the Popayán coffee auction, Caleb, the South Carolina roaster, said that his company has 90,000 pounds of Brazilian coffee sitting in a warehouse. If Trump lowers tariffs, he’ll bring those beans into the United States. “We’re kind of playing a slow game,” Caleb said. “Hoping to see if the tariffs change.”
