A tariff meltdown for American chocolate makers

Oompa Loompa doompadee-do, we’ve got a tariff puzzle for you: President Trump seems to think border taxes are a Willy Wonka golden ticket for the U.S. economy. But what does it do to America’s artisan chocolate businesses when huge duties raise the cost of cacao, an ingredient that only grows some 20 degrees above and below the equator?

“This is the sole income for my husband and me,” says Dahlia Graham, the CEO of Fruition Chocolate Works, a small bean-to-bar outfit in New York. “We employ people. We’re trying to make it work and to continue to grow our business, but it’s like we’re getting squeezed—and squeezed and squeezed.”

Hawaii and Puerto Rico are the only suitable regions in the U.S. for growing cacao, and they produce a bite-size quantity. In other words, American chocolate makers can’t function without imports. Last year cocoa prices jumped some 180%, amid bad weather in West Africa and an outbreak of swollen-shoot virus, according to JPMorgan agricultural commodities strategist Tracey Allen. “Ahead of ‘Liberation Day,’” Ms. Allen says, “cocoa prices were starting to come off of that high.”

Uncommon Cacao, a specialty trader based in Colorado, buys from 17 countries and sells mainly to small U.S. businesses that make chocolate from scratch. “We’re safe for a couple containers that are on the water, but everything else for the rest of the year, we’re expecting to be tariffed,” says CEO Emily Stone. After Mr. Trump’s reciprocal tariff announcement, she was bracing for a 46% tax on Vietnam, 36% on Thailand, and 17% on the Philippines.

Such levies would have walloped Fruition, too. Ms. Graham says she uses organic, all-natural cocoa butter, and she paid $16.90 a kilo last September, up from $10 in April 2024. After Mr. Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, a supplier quoted $39, a price that once would have been in the realm of pure imagination.

Mr. Trump put a 90-day pause on those levies. But they could be back at any moment, and meanwhile he left in place a 10% tariff. “We are going to need to pass that on to our customers,” Ms. Stone says. “That’s just a reality.”

Chocolate makers, in turn, are trying to pass their higher cacao costs on to consumers. Fruition has raised its least expensive bar to $12 from $10. But at some point, customers might stop buying, and Ms. Graham worries about being dropped by outlets for her products, including Whole Foods.

Cacao and Cardamom, a chocolatier in Houston, sells bonbons, in flavors like mango caramel and earl gray lavender, for about $4 each. Founder Annie Rupani Farino says the chocolate she uses has gone from $8 a pound to more than $20, and tariffs will raise the cost of special packaging imported from China.

“It’s a ton of financial pressure to worry about,” Ms. Rupani Farino says. “I think we’ve kind of maxed out at what we can charge for a bonbon. It would be almost inane to charge something more than that.”

Whatever Mr. Trump thinks he’s doing with his global tariffs, this is the bitter reality for American chocolate businesses. The President is messing with prices and supply chains on a whim, and it isn’t as if the U.S. can repatriate the raw material. Not even Wonka’s Oompa Loompas could get cacao to thrive in Kansas.