President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order exempting a range of food imports — including coffee, beef and bananas — from his reciprocal tariff policies.
The White House said the president had “determined that certain agricultural products shall no longer be subject to the reciprocal tariffs.” Among the items being exempted are coffee, tea, tropical fruits, fruit juices, cocoa, oranges and tomatoes, the White House said.
The rollback comes amid nationwide complaints of high grocery prices, despite Trump’s campaign pledge to lower prices.
White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement Friday that Trump had detailed potential tariff modifications in a Sept. 5 executive order that “specifically laid out various natural resources and agricultural products not produced in the United States that could be eligible for tariff-free treatment.”
“Exemptions are accordingly set to be granted following a spate of new trade deals being inked with some of our biggest allies in the western hemisphere, in addition to the deals that President Trump has already secured with the EU, Japan, the UK, and other major trading partners,” Desai said.
Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., the ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement the administration is “finally admitting publicly what we’ve all known from the start: Trump’s Trade War is hiking costs on people.”
He said the administration is putting “out a fire they started and claiming it as progress.”
In a statement Friday, Chris Swonger, the president and CEO of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States — the industry’s national trade organization — criticized the administration’s decision to leave distilled spirits from the European Union and the United Kingdom off the list. He described it as “yet another blow to the U.S. hospitality industry just as the critical holiday season kicks into high gear.”
“EU and UK spirits, including Scotch, Cognac, and Irish Whiskey, are value-added agricultural products that cannot be produced in the United States,” Swonger said.
Trump’s order comes a little more than a week after Democrats defeated Republican gubernatorial candidates in Virginia and New Jersey.
NBC News polling showed that the vast majority of voters — about two-thirds — think Trump hasn’t lived up to his promises to curb inflation and improve the economy.
