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The Trump administration is weighing broad exemptions to recently imposed tariffs, including on beef, citrus, coffee and bananas, as it scrambles to ease food costs, the New York Times reported.
US President Donald Trump (Photo: AP)
New Delhi,UPDATED: Nov 14, 2025 06:02 IST
The Trump administration is preparing wide-ranging exemptions to some of its own tariffs in a bid to ease high food prices, the New York Times reported on Thursday, citing three people briefed on the internal discussions.
The move would mark one of the clearest signs yet that the White House is recalibrating its trade agenda amid mounting voter frustration over affordability.
According to the Times, the changes would affect certain reciprocal tariffs President Donald Trump announced in April, including duties on products from countries that have not secured trade deals with the administration. The paper said exemptions under consideration include beef and citrus imports, though sources cautioned that Trump had not made a final decision.
Any shift on beef would be politically sensitive. Ranchers have complained that allowing more imports cuts against Trump’s repeated calls to boost domestic production. If enacted, the plan would amount to a notable retreat from one of Trump’s signature economic pillars — even as he continues to insist, wrongly, the Times noted. Democrats leaned heavily into cost-of-living concerns during recent elections.
The developing proposal appears broader than the exemptions Trump outlined in a September executive order. That directive would have limited waivers to goods not grown or made in the US and imported from countries with formal trade agreements. It tasked Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer with evaluating more than a thousand product categories, from metals and minerals to antibiotics, plane parts and agricultural goods like coffee, avocados and vanilla beans.
Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have been signaling the shift. “Coffee, we’re going to lower some tariffs,” Trump told Fox News host Laura Ingraham. Bessent added in a separate Fox interview that Americans should expect substantial announcements within days on foods the US doesn’t produce domestically, including coffee and bananas.
Trump has recently floated the idea of a tariff dividend for Americans and acknowledged that consumers are paying something for the trade duties.
- Ends
Published By:
Nitish Singh
Published On:
Nov 14, 2025
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