Coffee Trade
More than 70% of American adults
drink coffee each week—making coffee America’s favorite beverage (other than bottled water)—and Americans spend more than $100 billion on coffee every year.
In addition, coffee supports nearly 2.2 million U.S. jobs and adds more than $343 billion to the U.S. economy every year. Coffee consumers spend nearly $110 billion each year. Coffee businesses pay nearly $38 billion in local, state, and federal taxes annually.
U.S. coffee benefits depend on stable, secure trade
Since coffee cannot grow in most of the United States—only Hawaii and Puerto Rico—more than 99% of America’s coffee must be imported—mostly raw (or “green”) coffee beans. Depending upon the form in which coffee is imported, it then takes a number of paths to consumers—such as being stored, cleaned, shipped, roasted, packed, distributed, marketed, prepared, and finally sold to U.S. coffee drinkers, with every $1 in coffee imports generating $43 of value for the U.S. economy.
The United States’ top sources of green coffee beans are Brazil (32%), Colombia (20%), Vietnam (8%), and Honduras (7%).
1 To ensure Americans have access to their favorite beverage—often the first thing they reach for every morning—the NCA works as the voice of U.S. coffee to advocate for policies that advance the U.S. coffee market and remove barriers to growing, trading, and producing coffee.
America’s favorite beverage drives big benefits for U.S. workers, communities, coffee drinkers, and the entire U.S. economy, and relates to important areas of American interest including:
- Coffee plant health, research, and farming practices, to ensure a steady supply of coffee;
- Nutrition and food safety, to ensure that coffee drinkers have fact-based information about the health benefits associated with drinking coffee;
- Economic, jobs, and trade policy, to ensure that coffee continues to fuel not just coffee drinkers, but the American economy.