COFFEE

A Personal History

With the crazy boomeranging of import taxes (aka tariffs) by the current federal administration, I worry about being able to afford to buy most products. It does not surprise me how much we import from other countries—a LOT. I discovered last weekend that a medication I need was made in India and imported. Another medication I need was made in Israel and imported. America imports a lot of food items, too. I can live without avocados but not bananas (and their load of potassium), for example. Where would America grow bananas? I noted recently that the frozen brussel sprouts I buy were grown in Belgium, which makes sense considering their name, and imported. All this reminds me of my experience in the USSR when I traveled there on a tour—fresh fruits and vegetables were rare on our menus and nonexistent in stores. When a bunch of us on the tour banded together to request fresh fruit for breakfast, especially after I spotted a guy selling bananas out of the back of a truck, we were eventually served bananas at breakfast. Citrus fruit? Forget it. Is this what America has to look forward to thanks to Trump’s economic policies?

Import taxes will create food shortages and much higher prices that retirees like me probably won’t be able to afford. As I understand it, we got a guy in the White House who lives on fast food, so he’s not going to care much about fresh fruit and vegetables. And he drinks mostly Coca Cola products. Why would he care about coffee or tea?

Coffee has already risen in price over the last year due to bad weather affecting crops in South America. Chocolate prices have risen for the same reason. I am on a doctor-ordered restricted diet and cannot eat chocolate in any form. I can drink coffee, but must restrict my caffeine intake. So, I have a mug of regular coffee in the morning. I drink decaf tea and coffee the rest of the day, as well as water. It’s especially important for me to stay hydrated.

I haven’t always enjoyed coffee. While growing up, I drank tea. I still love tea and have one shelf in my kitchen devoted to all the different kinds of tea that I drink – Yerba Mate, Earl Grey, fruit teas, herbal teas, English breakfast tea, Yorkshire gold, green, Lapsang Souchong, Kukicha twig tea, etc. I usually make a pot of tea every morning. Decaf. My doctor warned me years ago that if I drank more than a mug of caffeinated anything daily, it would exacerbate the irritable bladder issues I’d begun to have. The less daily caffeine, the fewer bladder issues for me.

But in college, freshman year, in order to pull all-nighters to complete writing and typing papers, I turned to coffee. Until then, I didn’t care much for the taste. Indeed, when I drank it, I sweetened it heavily and added milk or cream to smooth it out. Coffee, bagels and cream cheese with scrambled eggs became a favorite Sunday morning breakfast at the student union, with friends, commiserating over the Sunday New York Times. I drank tea the rest of the time, preferring its taste (especially the smokey Lapsang Souchong) to anything else. I thought of tea as having a gentle caffeine compared to the sledgehammer of coffee caffeine.

My junior year, I studied in Vienna, Austria for the academic year. Besides exploring Austrian wines, I also explored Viennese cafés, finding a couple that became my regulars. I learned how Austrians drank their coffee but I don’t recall ever learning where their coffee came from, although I believe there was a customary Arabica coffee that was popular. In coffeehouses, whether you ordered a grosser Brauner (large brown—our black) or Kleiner Brauner, you received your coffee with a side of water to dull the acidic edge. You could order your coffee with whipped cream (schlagobers), a real treat, or with milk/cream (caffee latte). Returning to American coffee back at my college was kind of a letdown.

There was a co-worker when I worked for an advertising agency who drank black coffee constantly with his smokes. His office was next to the coffee machine. At this time, beginning my adult work life, I returned to my beloved tea for several years, rarely drinking the office coffee. I also drank a lot more Pepsi and Coca Cola products. When I left the agency to freelance, tea became my only caffeine drink, hot or cold. I loved Earl Grey, Lapsang Souchong, and Yorkshire Gold, but I’d try any kind of tea. I believe it was about ten years ago that I began to have the bladder issues and my doctor told me to switch to decaf. I switched to calm my poor bladder, even after I returned to fulltime office work in 2018 and had to get up at 4:30 a.m. every day.

In 2023, on the job, I’d occasionally buy a small regular coffee to give my energy level a jolt. My work schedule had begun to exhaust me—no work/life balance. In 2024, my physical exhaustion increased, and I began drinking regular coffee more often, but still limited it to one mug a morning. I rediscovered how much I enjoyed the taste of coffee. I decided that I could deal with however my bladder reacted to the caffeine. After I retired at the end of last January, I continued drinking my one mug of regular coffee in the morning, also rediscovering how much better ground coffee was compared to instant. Smoother. I’ve now settled into a routine: mug of regular coffee with breakfast, decaf tea the rest of the morning, a mug of decaf coffee mid-afternoon, then more decaf tea or sparkling water or plain water up until bed.

So, I am extremely unhappy and not supportive of Trump’s import taxes. They will increase the prices of imported products that Americans buy, including coffee and tea, and that means American consumers, not foreign countries, will pay those import taxes. I seem to remember a bunch of guys back in the day who broke into a ship carrying tea and dumping it all in the harbor because of import taxes imposed on them by a king. I wonder how effective a boycott of Trump’s golf courses and hotels would be? What else could American consumers boycott that would hit him in his bank account?

P.S. It does no good to try to explain to Trump the economic reality of import taxes (aka tariffs). People have tried, as I understand it. He has demonstrated that he does not have the intelligence or brain capacity to comprehend it, and he covers that up by insisting that he’s right especially when he’s wrong. He has no curiosity or desire to learn, two characteristics, added to others, that make him the worst president in American history.