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Two months ago, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s global tariff policy. Now, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will begin refunding the $166 billion in tariff revenue collected in 2025.
Businesses that paid tariffs, including U.S. coffee importers, can claim refunds through the CBP’s portal. However, as Nick Brown reports for Daily Coffee News, “there is still no clear view of precisely how much money coffee companies may recover or when refunds will arrive.” CBP said it will issue refunds in stages, focusing first on more recent tariff payments. Once approved, refunds will take between 60 and 90 days to process.
The Trump administration imposed tariffs on all imported goods, including coffee, starting in April 2025, with rates varying widely by country—some countries saw tariffs as high as 50%, while others saw rates as low as 10%. Importers shouldered the initial burden, but many passed on the increased costs to their customers. (The trend was not limited to coffee: across industries, price increases associated with tariffs were passed on to the end consumer.)
Coffee retailers responded in different ways. Retail costs at the grocery store went up, many coffee companies raised prices, and others tried to weather the storm by absorbing the added costs. In November, after months of pushback from lawmakers and industry groups, the administration finally exempted coffee and several other commodities from tariffs.
Will coffee shops or roasters see any refunds? Brown noted that the topic had come up in interviews with many coffee importers over the past year. Some smaller companies, he wrote, made contractual promises to roasting companies to pass on reimbursements should they ever come.
Some roasters are already sending messages to their consumers, letting them know they plan to pass on tariff reimbursements. In a statement on its Instagram page, the importer Onyx Coffee (not to be confused with Onyx Coffee Lab) said that “every cent we receive in tariff refunds will be passed directly back to you. You do not need to take any action.”
Read more on if you’ll ever get a tariff refund from Daily Coffee News here.
Photo by Rinson Chory on Unsplash
