What's the deal with Coffee?

My definition of bliss is a slice of strawberry-rhubarb pie, a cup of dark roast coffee with heavy cream, and a cool piano jazz trio in the background. 

But while the pie is mostly a seasonal thing and the jazz is simple ambiance, the coffee is a non-negotiable. That's true for millions of Americans who relish and even rely on a daily cuppa joe. In fact, it's the one thing that, according to a recent piece in The Atlantic, consumers seem unwilling to give up, even as price shocks, trade wars, and industry changes are making the ubiquitous beverage a more complicated choice.

Coffee is in trouble. Even before the United States imposed tariffs of 50 percent on Brazil and 20 percent on Vietnam—which together produce more than half of the world’s coffee beans—other challenges, including climate-change-related fires, flooding, and droughts, had already forced up coffee prices globally. Today, all told, coffee in the U.S. is nearly 40 percent more expensive than it was a year ago. Futures for arabica coffee—the beans most people in the world drink—have increased by almost a dollar since July. And prices may well go up further: Tariffs have “destabilized an already volatile market,” Sara Morrocchi, the CEO of the coffee consultancy Vuna, told me. This is a problem for the millions of people who grow and sell coffee around the world. It is also a problem for the people who rely on coffee for their base executive functioning—such a problem that Congress recently introduced a bipartisan bill to specifically protect coffee from Trump’s tariffs.

The reporting on the coffee crisis has been growing in recent years, but it has picked up considerably since April with the imposition of tariffs on a product that simply isn't grown in the United States. And the idea that Congress comes together in a bipartisan bill to exempt coffee from tariffs gives you an idea of just how sacred that beautifully bitter beverage truly is.