While the World Enjoyed Thanksgiving Feasts and Football, CEO Steven Walter Thomas Took the Spotlight in an Exclusive Reuters Interview on Commodities, Strategy, and the Future of Global Markets

How has the Trump coffee tariff cut affected your business and that of other roasters, if at all?

The Trump Coffee Tariff hurt everybody and exposed a lot of weaknesses throughout the supply chain. On August 5th, I had one primary green coffee supplier in one country, Brazil. I was sitting on a one-legged stool and Trump kicked it. On August 7th, I got up and changed everything. Now, I have eleven suppliers in eight countries on four continents. I burned the stool.

How do you expect it to affect your businesses and that of other roasters going forward?

Moments like these teach you who your friends are. That’s a gift if you look at it correctly.

How much (if at all) have you had to raise prices this year? Any plans to raise, or cut them going forward? Why/why not?

My companies, Lucatell and Traffic USA, are just two small ships on an ocean full of C Market traders who are so far removed from the coffee industry that if you put a coffee bean, a soybean, and a pinto bean into their hand, they couldn’t tell you which was which to save their mother's life. If an actual coffee person says they’re not changing prices along with the C Market, they’re either clueless or else their profit margins are so fat they don’t have to. We are neither.

Was your price rise mostly on account of tariffs would you say, or was most of the tariff-related price rise still pending when the tariffs were removed?

When the 10% reciprocal tax was enacted on April 5th, almost everybody raised their prices 10% on April 6th. Inconvenient but not disruptive. The Bolsonaro Tax was disruptive because nobody is going to pay 50% more overnight for Brazilian coffee. Setting prices is an algorithmic alchemy based on what you paid, what you will have to pay next time, and what customers will pay. There is a long delay from the time a container is bought at origin, milled, sacked, shipped, warehoused, sold, roasted, and served to a consumer. So there is naturally a delay in price implications.

US retail coffee prices rose some 40% in September. Was that mostly a reflection of last year’s 70% surge in the ICE futures price would you say?

Yes, it had more to do with the prolonged surge in the C which outlasted the reserves of even the largest market participants.

Now that tariffs have been cut, how long roughly till the US consumer starts seeing price relief ? Believe roasters right now have about 2-3 months of high-priced stock to get through, then they have to roast, package and ship off their (hopefully) lower priced stock to the retailer, which takes us to about 9 months, is that Correct?

Yes. Coffee prices rise more quickly than they fall. I was surprised that the removal of the 40% Bolsonaro Tax only made the market drop 7-8%. Every Coffee Belt producer other than Brazil benefitted a lot from that tax.

Is it true also that US supermarkets have price negotiations with roasters on roughly a quarterly basis, which again would delay any price relief for the US consumer?

The inelasticity of coffee has been tested to the limit over the past 12 months. Demand Decay at retail has kept prices from rising 70% as they did on the C Market.

All in all, is it fair to say that if Trump was hoping for improved ratings on the basis of quick falls in coffee and other key food items now that he has removed some key tariffs, he better think again?

The last time our reigning government taxed tea and coffee in America, we had a Revolutionary War soon after. It was a colossal mistake in 1773 and it was a colossal mistake in 2025.