• by Steven Rosenbaum , Featured Contributor, August 11, 2025

It’s early. You duck into your neighborhood Blue Bottle. The light is soft, the music ambient, and the barista already knows your order: a large oat milk latte. It costs $7.50—a lot. But it’s familiar. It’s your quiet indulgence before the day begins.

What you don’t know is that your cup—this small, comforting moment—has just become a front line in a new trade war. Not a metaphorical one, either. A real economic weapon, lobbed from Washington with a press release and a shrug.

Last week, Donald Trump, now the presumptive Republican nominee* and very much back on the campaign trail, announced a fresh wave of 50% tariffs on coffee imports from Brazil. No hearings. No warning. Just a declaration: Brazil is "undermining American farmers," and he’s going to fix it.

He isn’t.

He’s not even aiming at Brazil, really. He’s aiming at you. And José.

José Natal da Silva is a coffee farmer in Porciúncula, Brazil. He tends to 40,000 Arabica trees—every one of them planted, pruned, and harvested by hand. He’s not an industrial titan. He’s a small grower. A man who rises before dawn and works through the heat to produce the beans that make up your third wave espresso shot. And now, his beans are suddenly 50% more expensive to U.S. buyers—not because they’ve changed, but because they’ve been politically rebranded as a threat.

José won’t see more income. He’ll see less demand, less stability, and more pressure to cut costs or abandon his crop. Meanwhile, Blue Bottle gets a new invoice from its roaster, and your $7.50 latte inches up toward $8.25. It won’t come with a note explaining why. But that’s the reason.

It’s not inflation. It’s not milk. It’s not the minimum wage. It’s a tariff—and it’s been used not as policy, but as performance.

These are Trump’s tariffs. Not leftovers from his first term. Not relics of 2018. These are new, and they’re spreading. Coffee is just one of dozens of categories now affected by fresh rounds of punitive import taxes—some as high as 60%, many of them announced without coordination, diplomacy, or warning. Each one adds cost. Each one adds risk. And each one hits people who had nothing to do with the decision.

The logic behind these tariffs shifts day to day. One moment it’s national security. The next it’s protecting American jobs. Then it’s punishing unfair currency manipulation. But the consistency isn’t in the rationale—it’s in the disruption. They’re designed to cause pain. Not to end dependence, or to rebuild industries, but to provoke, threaten, and create a story that Trump alone can fix what he’s set on fire.

You can see it in the language he uses. He doesn’t speak about trade policy; he speaks about enemies. Countries aren’t partners, they’re “cheaters.” Tariffs aren’t tools, they’re weapons. And wielding them makes him look strong.

But the strength is superficial. The damage is real.

American consumers are already paying more—on coffee, on electronics, on raw materials that ripple through supply chains. And the people who were supposed to be helped—U.S. farmers, manufacturers, and small businesses—are instead being yanked between sudden costs, uncertain markets, and retaliatory tariffs from abroad.

This is what makes the term "tariff terrorism" not hyperbole, but a diagnosis. When a leader uses economic tools unpredictably, to maximize fear, uncertainty, and volatility—when the pain lands far from the decision-makers and squarely on the public—that’s not governance. That’s coercion. That’s intimidation.

It’s also political theater.

A $3,000 shipping container becomes $4,500 overnight. A key supplier goes silent, waiting to see what happens next. A farmer holds back exports, unsure if a contract will be honored. None of this builds jobs or reshapes global trade. But it generates headlines. It creates enemies. It gives the illusion of motion.

And it gives Trump something he’s always craved: a lever of control that doesn’t require legislation, coalition-building, or compromise. Just an announcement of a new kind of tax—one you won’t see on your pay stub, but will absolutely feel in your daily life.

The fact that it’s invisible makes it even more insidious. Tariffs don’t come with receipts. You don’t vote on them. You don’t get to opt out. They show up in the price of your shoes, your groceries, your coffee.

They show up in José’s bottom line, when his beans get dropped from the U.S. supply chain in favor of a cheaper Vietnamese or Guatemalan blend, restructured to avoid the new tax. They show up in for your barista, who has to explain why prices just went up again. And they show up in your wallet, slowly but relentlessly draining value for reasons that feel vague—because they’re meant to be.

So when you hear Trump boast about being tough on trade, ask yourself who actually paid the price last time—and who’s paying it now. Because this isn’t protectionism, nor patriotism. It’s economic shock deployed as political strategy.

And if we’re going to be honest about what’s happening, then we have to name it clearly: tariff terrorism. Not bombs and bullets, but fear and force, delivered through the economic system, leaving damage in its wake.

One cup at a time.

*Editor's note: While Trump has repeatedly alluded to running for a third term, he currently is Constitutionally-prohibited from doing so.