How chocolate tariffs could kill the Easter Bunny

Easter Sunday is days away, and there’s bad news for Americans looking to celebrate with traditional chocolate treats. Tariffs on cocoa and vanilla, both used to make the sweet stuff, will make chocolate and chocolate manufacturing more expensive in America, all while benefiting European candy makers.

That’s because of the top five Easter candies—at least according to Martha Stewart, four are made in America using imported ingredients. Those candies are Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Cadbury Chocolate Mini Eggs, and Hershey’s Milk Chocolate, all made by Hershey’s.

Hershey gets its cocoa from Brazil, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Ghana, Indonesia, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, and Peru.

Meanwhile, vanilla cannot be grown more than 20 degrees North of the equator, so the global vanilla supply mostly comes from Madagascar, Mexico, and Tahiti.

Mexican vanilla is likely all exempt from tariffs for now, thanks to the administration’s pause in a previously announced 25 percent tariff on products imported from both Mexico and Canada under President Trump’s US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA).

But imports from all of these other countries are currently being tariffed at the rate of 10 percent.

Were the full reciprocal tariffs recently announced in effect, Madagascan vanilla and chocolate from Indonesia and Côte d’Ivoire would become more costly. The reciprocal tariff announced by the administration on Madagascan goods is a steep 47 percent, while the tariff on Indonesian and Côte d’Ivoire imports is, respectively, 32 percent and 21 percent.

This is how you kill the American chocolate industry and the Easter Bunny.

There’s a little good news, though.

Because President Trump paused those Mexican and Canadian tariffs of 25 percent, and has, for now, anyway, stuck with his signature trade deal from his first administration, the famous Cadbury Crème Egg has been spared. That’s because Crème Eggs consumed in America are in fact made North of the border and then brought across. The Cadbury Bunny can relax—he won’t need to work overtime hyping eggs whose prices have spiked like Joe Biden was still in office.

The same cannot be said for those working in the US chocolate-making industry, who are trying to hold their own against foreign competition. Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that in the wake of the newly announced reciprocal tariffs, American chocolatiers were actually losing ground to European rivals.

That was evident in cocoa pricing discrepancies between New York and London.

Jonathan Parkman, head of agricultural sales at commodities broker Marex Group, told Bloomberg that consumers would likely end up bearing the cost of the price increases seen in the New York market, and that that could lead to US-made chocolate selling less well internationally.

But the ill effects of tariffs for American chocolate manufacturing have also been evident in stock prices for chocolate makers.

Over the last month, Mondelez International Inc., which makes the Cadbury Crème Egg—and perhaps even more famously, Swiss Alp-shaped Toblerone—has seen its stock price rise by nearly 4 percent.

Meanwhile, Hershey’s shares have fallen by close to 3 percent—a bad sign if we’re looking to stop the Swiss and Belgians stealing our thunder.

The recipe seems to be clear: If President Trump wants to Make American Chocolate Great Again—and keep American parents from turning into literal fondue in the chocolate aisle next Easter— the tariffs hitting the industry need to go.

Taylor Millard is a writer in Alexandria, Virginia. His work has featured in the Spectator, Washington Examiner, Inside Sources, and other publications.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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