Bettina Makalintal is a senior reporter at Eater.com, covering restaurant trends, home cooking advice, and all the food you can’t escape on your TikTok FYP. Previously, she worked for Bon Appétit and VICE’s Munchies. Jaya Saxena is a correspondent at Eater.com, and the series editor of Best American Food and Travel Writing. She explores wide ranging topics like labor, identity, and food culture.
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump unveiled a new list of reciprocal tariffs on most of the United States’s global trade partners in what he described as a “declaration of economic independence” and an effort to “make America wealthy again.” On top of a baseline 10 percent tariff on all imports, President Trump levied heavier tariffs on countries that he classified as the “worst offenders” when it came to trade (though what that actually means is anyone’s guess). This means tariffs of 49 percent on imports from Cambodia, 46 percent on imports from Vietnam, 34 percent on imports from China, 27 percent on imports from India, and 24 percent on imports from Japan. The stock market has plummeted in response to the numbers, which may very well have been calculated using ChatGPT, and food companies now find themselves scrambling.
According to Rodrigo Adão, associate professor of economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, most tariffs we put on other countries “end up being paid by someone in the U.S., split between the consumer and the firm doing the importing.” For instance, if a company is importing coffee from Indonesia, which now has a 32 percent tariff on all goods, that either means they have to absorb the costs by cutting into their profits, or raise prices for the consumer to make that up.
Trump has argued that tariffs will encourage Americans to buy more domestically produced goods. But as much as we love to value eating locally and seasonally, there’s a lot of stuff that isn’t grown in the U.S. that many people consider essential. Trump declared a 27 percent tariff on India, the top producer by far of bananas. Tariffs are set to severely impact goods like coffee and chocolate, which are just not produced domestically. “If there is nowhere in the U.S. where you can grow coffee, then you know there is not much you can do,” says Adão. Perhaps an industrious farmer will begin growing coffee, but even if so, “that land was typically used for something else, which means that there is a cost.” And it’ll take a long time for that product to actually reach shelves.
Tariffs on China are already affecting brands like Fly By Jing. And many businesses, including restaurants and food brands, are based in the U.S. but still need to use international supplies. We spoke to four entrepreneurs from businesses that rely on imports about how they expect these tariffs to impact their bottom lines — and everyone else’s.
“Essentially, it’s going to be a lot less innovation”
Ethan Frisch and Ori Zohar, co-founders of Burlap & Barrel, a spice company that prioritizes equitable, transparent, and traceable supply chains
Eater: What do these new tariffs mean for you as a business? Were you surprised by the news?
Ethan Frisch: We had seen some rumors going around that this 10-percent tariff across the board might happen, but it is hugely impactful on our business beyond the 10 percent on all imports. These reciprocal tariffs that are being discussed: Some of the countries at the top of that list are countries that we import quite a bit from, especially Vietnam. For Royal Cinnamon — our number-one, best-selling, most popular product — to have an almost 50 percent tariff applied to it really calls into question its commercial viability. It really challenges the business model that we have built for the last few years.
Ori Zohar: We have to make holiday decisions now, but because of all the instability from the economic policy, the eroding trust for America with our partner farmers, with everyone all the way down the line, we’re having a really hard time being able to figure out what December is going to look like. We don’t even know what April is going to look like at this point, and so it makes it really hard to operate as a business.
How do you plan to respond to the tariffs?
OZ: We’re going to try to run as lean as possible as a company during this unstable time. We’ve stopped any hiring, and we’re slowing down. We introduced over 50 new products last year. We have this big slate of things that we wanted to add. But with tariffs and this broader economic uncertainty — customers asking whether they can afford certain things, and trying to save more — we’re pulling way back on our collaborations. We’re losing some of our appetite for risk, and we’re focusing on our core lineup of spices.
EF: We’re a social enterprise. We’re not pushing these added costs back to our partner farmers. That’s our number-one priority: that we’re not asking our partner farmers to eat this tax. We’re going to have to find the savings ourselves in our own business. Essentially, it’s going to be a lot less innovation: leaning on our existing lineup, focusing on things that we know that there’s a market for, and taking fewer risks with new products, niche products, or things that might be unfamiliar to the American market.
To prepare, we launched our biggest sale ever, knowing that this was coming. We have a big sale running [from April 3 to 6], to try to give us a little bit of a war chest to be prepared for whatever comes. We have always been committed to keeping our prices accessible. Part of our core business proposition is that we pay farmers more, we cut out intermediaries, and we provide a competitively priced product here. We’re going to resist it as long as we can.
Why is your business so vulnerable here?
OZ: Working in spices means that you’re uniquely a global company. Our business is built on long-term partnerships with these farmers based on spices that have a unique terroir and history in these regions, and that can’t be replaced. Nobody wants an Herbes de Provence that’s domestically grown in the U.S. The whole point is that it’s built in Provence, based on their soil and climate and recipe and tradition, and that’s true across all of our spices.
The irony here is that there is no domestic spice industry to protect in the U.S. We do work with as many domestic spice farmers as we can, getting chile and garlic and [working with] the father and daughter company that brings salt out of the earth in upstate New York. But there is no domestic cinnamon industry, there is no domestic cumin industry. This stuff is, by default, global and is not from the U.S. We’re paying a lot more to do things that we can’t switch to another place.
Are your farm partners feeling more instability on their end?
EF: The U.S. has a reputation around the world for being a good trading partner. In rural areas that we’ve been to, if the people we work with don’t know anything else about the U.S., they know that it’s a good destination for their crops. They know they make more money. They take a lot of pride in knowing that it’s available here. That has changed very quickly, very radically. There’s a lot of nervousness, and our partners are looking to us to reassure them that we are committed, which we are.
OZ: Unlike other industries, where maybe you can just switch a factory, we’re working with an agricultural product with farmers, most of whom are harvesting once a year. Our Royal Cinnamon comes from 15-year-old trees — you can’t pivot away from that on a dime because the policy changed. Everyone is scrambling. It’s creating a lot of work for not a lot of benefit for the U.S. customers.
EF: We’ve been operating under the assumption that the chaos is the point. It’s important for us to really stick to our core values as a company. For consumers also, I think that’s an important message: Buy from companies that have good supply chains, that have good products. Small businesses need help from consumers, especially now.
“We don’t want to underpay the growers or suppliers”
Frederico Cervellin, Chief Product Officer of Natoora, a food supplier and importer servicing restaurants and boutique stores
Were you prepared for this news?
FC: There were a lot of rumors starting in November about the tariffs, though until yesterday, we weren’t 100 percent sure. It wasn’t completely unexpected, but knowing the percentages, it’s highly impactful. We are quite lucky that we focus quite a bit on domestic produce. But there are a percentage of products we import from Europe, primarily. We get some chicory and white asparagus from France, which are in season this time of year. We get tinned tomatoes and olive oil, olives, tinned anchovies, things like that. So that part of the supply chain will be affected.
Is there an option to switch to a domestic producer for these products?
FC: There is a line we’re about to start on domestic tomatoes. But generally, the quality you find here doesn’t compare to what we import from Italy. You can’t compare the acidity. There are some olive oil producers in California, but they tend to be way smaller productions and way more expensive. It’s not really your standard, classic cooking olive oil you can get from Europe. I don’t see many alternatives here. It’s the same with anchovies. We specialize in anchovies from a small town in Spain, Santoña, which are renowned as the best in the world. You can’t replicate that within a few months domestically.
How do you envision these tariffs will immediately affect business?
FC: Obviously, things are moving fast and there’s a lot of volatility. I think many of our clients will stock up on dry goods, so they have a bit of a cushion there. My feeling is that people will wait a little bit to see how things progress, and if the 20 percent stays, then I don’t see many alternatives than passing it onto the consumer. There are people who will try to squeeze the suppliers, but we don’t want to underpay the growers or suppliers.
It’s not an ideal situation. It’s also the uncertainty. If we had at least a timeline, then people could have arranged things a little bit better. I lived through Brexit when I was based in the UK, and it was the same story. If you don’t know until the last minute, that’s worse.
“Right now, I’m honestly contemplating our survival”
Sam Fore, chef and owner of Tuk Tuk Snack Shop, a Sri Lankan and Southern restaurant in Lexington, Kentucky
You posted today about how one of your suppliers said all products from Sri Lanka were going up 44 percent. What does that mean for you?
Well, it’s not only the food business that we do; we also have a cocktail program and a wine program. And so, you know, the threat of new tariffs on wines when we’re trying to highlight different regions and really expand a palate for [what] a region makes — it was already starting to affect our purchasing choices. We try as much as we can to source locally, because that’s really the only cost-effective way to do it. But a lot of the ingredients I source from Sri Lanka are what make us special.
Right, it seems like a lot of these ingredients just aren’t being grown in the U.S.
For example, kithul, a fish-tailed palm syrup from Sri Lanka. It’s not like I can get that anywhere else. I tried using sorghum, but it’s not the same flavor profile. So I’m like okay, we use kithul in our Old Fashioned, in our roasted carrots, in some of our desserts. So now I have to reverse-engineer my entire menu to figure out how much that’s going to impact our pricing right after we launched our spring menu.
How are you thinking about the balance between eating costs elsewhere, or passing this onto the customer?
We’re in a business with such razor-thin margins, so passing it onto the customer — some of them are understanding — but that’s just a one-star review waiting to happen. Right now, I’m honestly contemplating our survival, because there’s a touch of Sri Lanka in everything we do. When you have a good Sri Lankan dish or curry, it’s so distinct from the Indian or Thai experience of curry, and now I either have to substitute that or take it away.
Trump is saying that these tariffs will encourage domestic production and support American businesses. Do you think that’s true?
I grew up in North Carolina, in the middle of the textile belt, so I get it. There are significant amounts of the American heartland where factories are dormant. A lot of fast fashion comes from Sri Lanka, and I think that is likely what they were thinking of when they were imposing that tariff. But a sweeping 44 percent tariff is just going to make things more expensive for everyone, and clothing is not the only thing that we get from these countries. There’s no way to get kithul or Ceylon cinnamon from an American source. It really makes you think about the cost of doing business as usual.
These interviews have been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
