While perusing some coffee to buy from my favourite roaster that also is extremely transparent about pricing, this caught my eye:

$7.35 USD per lb including $0.65 USD per lb “reciprocal” tariff placed on Ethiopian imports. * This coffee entered the US before being imported into Canada.

Hm. Seems the niche importer they worked with to access these particular beans was American. Since we’re a small market, I suspect this kind of thing is going to be happening a lot.

I got an initial take from an LLM and apparently the company importing from Ethiopia and re-exporting to Subtext is eligible for a refund on the duty (a “drawback”) but a big, um, drawback of that is that it’s fairly onerous:

  • Many importers use a drawback specialist or broker because the paperwork is complex; fees are usually contingency-based (e.g. 20–30% of the recovered duty).
  • For small, irregular shipments, filing costs often outweigh the refund, so many small importers simply don’t bother.
  • For large distributors or commodities with steady re-export flows, drawback is routine and worthwhile.

Curious if anyone has similar anecdotes or run across an attempt to quantify this sort of trade flow and effect of US tariffs? I wonder if the impact of this across every little thing adds up to a meaningful amount of inflation?

      • DeepChill@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        7 days ago

        I wonder if that’s why their huge presence at the grocery store after the Tangerine Twat started attacking Canada has all but completely dried up. The only option I saw for Kicking Horse last time out was small bags of pre-ground coffee. No more whole beans and no more variety of blends etc.

    • blindsight@beehaw.org
      61·
      7 days ago

      Right, but if the beans they roast come through the US, then locally roasted beans will still have American tariffs applied, and it’s often not worth applying to get a refund. The goods were not for final sale in the US, the tariffs don’t apply, but the paperwork is more onerous than the refund, for smaller businesses. That’s the point.