November 14, 2025
President Trump just cut the tariffs on all kinds of fruits, spices, nuts, coffee, and beef. Obviously – he’s recognizing that your grocery prices are too high even though this what he’s been saying about it publicly.
While he doesn’t want to hear about affordability – it’s clear he knows it’s a problem for you and perhaps that’s causing him to rethink some of his tariffs. Just a short time ago, President Trump signed this executive order that eliminates the reciprocal tariffs on a whole list of items. But why? Well – the executive order says it’s because of lots of things – it says trump received recommendations from his staff, it says the status of trade negotiations has improved – but it also clearly says it’s happening because of the “current domestic demand for certain products, and current domestic capacity to produce certain products, among other things, i have determined that it is necessary and appropriate to further modify the scope of products subject to the reciprocal tariff …. Specifically, I have determined that certain agricultural products shall not be subject to the reciprocal tariff.” That means he now realizes that the demand for these grocery items is high and in lots of cases – these items aren’t able to be produced in the United States so when the cost of living is so high – these specific tariffs don’t make sense. The executive order comes with this annex document which lists all the products that are no longer subject to trump’s reciprocal tariffs…and there’s definitely a theme here. There is a reason why these specific items are now being cut from trump’s tariff list.
Let’s talk about bananas. Only a small amount of bananas are grown in the United States. We mostly import them from Latin American countries. So they were subject to those reciprocal tariffs. Well according to the most recent inflation report from September 2025 – bananas were 6.9% more expensive this year than they were in September of 2024. And if you now look at the annex — there you go – bananas are no longer on the list of items subject to Trump’s reciprocal tariffs.
Let’s talk about beef. There’s a lot going on with beef right now and you could make all kinds of excuses about why it’s expensive – but I’m not here to make excuses – I’m here to show you the facts and the numbers. We do produce a lot of beef in this country but we also import some of it. According to the same September cpi report, take your pick. All kinds of beef is up since last September. Uncooked ground beef was up 12.9%, uncooked beef roasts were up 18.4% and uncooked beef steaks were up 16.6%. And there you go – look at this list of the types of beef that are no longer on the reciprocal tariff list….two full pages.
And…then there’s coffee. We do not produce coffee in the United States. We import the vast majority of the coffee we use. Because coffee was an import it was subject to Trump’s tariffs. As a result in September 2025 – the cpi report found coffee was up 18.9% compared to September of 2024. And here you go – coffee is no longer subject to the reciprocal tariffs.
According to today’s White House announcement Trump’s order is back dated to yesterday November 13th. That means if any of the items on the annex list came into this country as of yesterday – they will not be subject to reciprocal tariffs. Now it’s definitely possible without these tariffs, the prices on these items will eventually start to go down. But, by how much? Don’t forget – prices on groceries started out more expensive and then President Trump came into office and added his tariffs on top of it. So even if in a perfect world the tariffs fall off and prices do come back down from where they are today…the question is — will they go down below the price we were paying in 2024 — before trump took office? We will have to wait and see.
Read the executive order and annex here.
