Green coffee buyers who paid inflated prices during 2025's tariff months are starting to see some of that money return. Royal Coffee, one of the trade's larger importers, is the first to confirm it has actually issued tariff credits.
The credits are arriving as CBP's nationwide refund program works through its backlog of claims.
Key Facts
- Grocery-store roasted coffee prices climbed 21.7% between August 2024 and August 2025, the sharpest one-year jump since 1997, as tariffs on major coffee-producing countries took hold. CBP is now refunding those same tariffs nationally after the Supreme Court ruled them unlawful in February.
- Royal Coffee is the first green coffee importer confirmed to have issued actual tariff credits. The credits cover 927 of the 1,044 coffee lots it is pursuing recovery on.
- Other importers, including Royal New York, Algrano, and Onyx Coffee, have pledged to pass along refunds once they receive them. None has confirmed issuing any credits of their own yet.
For seven months in 2025, from April 5 through Nov. 12, green coffee imported into the United States carried tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled those tariffs unlawful in February, in a case called Learning Resources v. Trump.
Royal paid the duties directly to the government at the time, like every importer. They became part of its landed cost.
How Coffee Tariffs Are Being Refunded
The tariffs hit consumers before they hit anyone's refund account. Daily Coffee News reported that grocery-store roasted coffee prices climbed 21.7% between August 2024 and August 2025, citing Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) hadn't recorded a sharper one-year jump since 1997. The broader retail packaged coffee category rose 20.9% over the same period, with instant coffee up 20.1%.
The 50% tariff rate Brazil faced was, analysts said, the single biggest factor behind the price spike.
Retail coffee prices rose sharply across every major category as the 2025 tariffs took hold, with roasted coffee posting the steepest jump.
Those tariffs are now being refunded nationally. Customs and Border Protection had collected roughly $166 billion in IEEPA duties across more than 330,000 importers and 53 million shipments of all kinds. It had no system built to return money at that scale.
The agency built one, called CAPE, short for Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries. Phase 1 opened April 20, 2026, covering shipments that hadn't yet cleared final customs review or had cleared within the prior 80 days. Phase 2, covering more complex claims, opened June 29.
Nationally, the refund program has picked up speed. CBP had repaid $86.3 billion of the $166 billion pool as of July 10, up from about $71 billion two weeks earlier.
Trade publication Inside U.S. Trade and tariff-tracking site Tariffs Tool each reported the same figures independently, both citing a CBP court declaration filed the same week.
Importers Have Started Paying Out Refunds
Coffee importers said they would pass the recovered money back to customers. Royal Coffee, based in Emeryville, California, is the first to confirm it has actually done so. The company wrote in a June 29 blog post that CBP has begun returning duties on 927 of the 1,044 coffee lots it is pursuing.
As each lot clears, Royal issues an IEEPA Tariff Credit naming the coffee, lot number, invoice, weight, tariff rate, and dollar amount. Customers can apply the credit to open invoices.
Royal's Oakland tasting room, The Crown, is applying the same logic to drinks. Since individual cups can't be tied to an invoice, the café is cutting every coffee beverage's price by 25 cents for about 60 days.
The discount is meant to return the roughly $2,500 in duties it paid on coffee served during the same window. "We could have kept this money," Royal Coffee CEO Max Nicholas-Fulmer said in a July 1 press release.
Other Coffee Importers Have Pledged the Same, Not Yet Delivered
Royal isn't the only importer that told customers it would return recovered duties. Royal New York, a separate importer based in South Plainfield, New Jersey, made a similar pledge.
It wrote in an April 24 blog post that it would "promptly and fully pass those funds back" once refunds arrive. It has not published an update confirming any have gone out.
Algrano, a coffee marketplace, said in an April 28 post that it had already filed claimback requests on customers' behalf. It said it would issue credit notes once money arrived. It had not confirmed any disbursement as of that writing.
Onyx Coffee, in an Instagram statement reported by Fresh Cup, said "every cent we receive in tariff refunds will be passed directly back to you."