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Trump reportedly prepares to adjust tariff polices to bring down prices

November 14, 2025 | | Print Article

President Donald Trump reportedly intends to drastically revamp his tariff policies to better address the current affordability crisis.

According to The New York Times, the president is specifically “preparing broad exemptions to certain [reciprocal] tariffs in an effort to ease elevated food prices.”

The exemptions will mainly target countries that haven’t yet negotiated a trade agreement with the administration.

Speaking with Fox News on Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent revealed that the policy change will likewise mainly target goods that aren’t produced in the U.S.

“You’re going to see some substantial announcement over the next couple of days in terms of things we don’t grow here in the United States, coffee being one of them,” he said. “Bananas, other fruits, things like that. So that will bring the prices down very quickly.”

Appearing on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” a day earlier, Trump himself also spoke about coffee, telling host Laura Ingraham that he intends to reduce tariffs on coffee in order to reduce coffee prices.

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“We’re going to lower some tariffs,” he said. “We’re going to have some coffee come in. We’re going to take care of all of this stuff very quickly.”

CNN claims that it’s “obvious that Trump’s global tariffs on imported goods like coffee — a product that is almost entirely imported in the US — have contributed to the big coffee price increases experienced by Americans this year.”

And it is in part these big price increases to coffee and other products that helped propel the election victories of Mamdani and other Democrats.

“Democrats won key elections in last week’s off-year elections with candidates that focused heavily on affordability and a promise to bring down costs,” the Times notes. “Democrats won governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey by wide margins, and they won statewide races in Pennsylvania and Georgia.”

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Vice President JD Vance responded to Democrats’ victories by publishing a tweet to X reminding Republicans to focus on affordability.

“We need to focus on the home front,” he wrote. “The president has done a lot that has already paid off in lower interest rates and lower inflation, but we inherited a disaster from Joe Biden and Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

“We’re going to keep on working to make a decent life affordable in this country, and that’s the metric by which we’ll ultimately be judged in 2026 and beyond,” he added.

But not everybody in the Trump administration agrees that pursuing exceptions to the president’s tariffs is such a good idea.

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“Exemptions could further rankle ranchers and farmers who are a powerful political bloc for the Trump administration,” the Times notes. “In recent weeks, Mr. Trump clashed with American ranchers over a plan to buy more beef from Argentina, currently a tiny source of U.S. imports, in a move the president said would lower domestic prices.”

“It’s also not clear how much of an effect the tariff exemptions would have on U.S. prices. Many agricultural products imported into the United States come from Canada or Mexico, which already have significant exemptions to tariffs under the trade agreement the United States shares with those countries,” according to the paper.

This new policy change comes amid the Trump administration reportedly securing several new trade deals this week with Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Ecuador.

Vivek Saxena
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