WASHINGTON — President Trump’s April 2 tariff announcement may have brought more chaos into the turbulent world of cocoa.
The world’s top suppliers of cocoa beans, the Ivory Coast and Ghana, were slapped with retaliatory tariffs of 21% and 10%, respectively, for all imports brought into the United States. The two countries were part of a long list of other US trading partners assigned at least a baseline 10% duty, with several countries receiving higher levies.
The United States is the world’s leading importer of chocolate and cocoa products, importing nearly $4 billion in 2023, according to the US Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service. Since cocoa beans require a tropical climate to grow, the United States must import nearly all its cocoa needs to meet domestic demand. Hawaii is the only US state capable of growing the crop, but its production capacity falls well below US manufacturers’ requirements.
Most US imports are already processed chocolate, totaling nearly $3 billion annually. Canada and Mexico are the top suppliers of chocolate to the United States, and both nations’ imports that comply with the United States-Mexico-Canada-Agreement, which includes chocolate, received a reprieve from the baseline 10%reciprocal tariff announcement. Cocoa beans are the second highest cocoa imports, followed by cocoa butter, cocoa paste and cocoa powder. Below are the top suppliers of the products, along with their newly assigned tariff percentage:
• Cocoa beans: Ivory Coast (21%), Ghana (10%), Ecuador (10%)
• Cocoa butter: Indonesia (32%), Malaysia (24%)
• Cocoa paste: Ivory Coast (21%)
• Cocoa powder: Netherlands (20%)
In January, the International Cocoa Association forecast a global cocoa deficit at 478,000 tonnes, the fourth consecutive deficit and the largest in over 60 years, due mainly to weather and disease-related crop failures in Ivory Coast and Ghana. The cocoa supply crisis has led to a surge in prices to record highs in December.
