“At a time when the US is imposing a 50 per cent tariff on Brazilian products, the Chinese are praising the fact that “Brazilian coffee beans are very popular with consumers”, according to a recent CNN CNN, china has approved 183 Brazilian coffee exporters for five-year sales licenses to China. “This is good news for Brazilian coffee exporters who are worried about the tariffs,” Reuters said. Brazil is the world’s largest coffee producer, accounting for about a third of world production. As more Brazilian beans enter the Chinese market, how will the global coffee industry be restructured? What do industry insiders in both countries say about this? Global Times reporter conducted an investigation.
Brazilian grower: Everything is falling apart under us tariffs
The United States imposed a 50 percent tariff on some Brazilian products on Aug. 6, a challenge for commodity traders and Brazilian coffee exporters, Reuters reported, the latter sells about 8m bags of coffee a year to us coffee processors, who are desperate to find new markets for their products. Brazilian industry sources said the tariffs would not only hit the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of households in the country, but also force coffee exporters to accelerate their expansion into emerging markets, including China, to deal with the uncertainty of the Protectionism in the United States.
Brazil is reported to have more than 300,000 coffee growers, 75 per cent of whom are smallholder farmers. Edmilson da Silva Melo, a coffee grower from the town of Porchukula in Rio de Janeiro, said after news of the tariffs, “We struggled for years to get where we are, and all of a sudden, everything is falling apart and we don’t know how to survive.”
A coffee producer displays processed coffee beans at a farm in Bragança Paulista, Brazil, Monday. Visual China
Brazil is one of the world’s largest coffee growers and exporters, while the United States is its largest customer and the world’s largest coffee consumer. According to statistics, nearly 200 million Americans drink coffee every day. The US imports 8.14 m 60kg bags of 2024 from Brazil.
Ferreira, president of the Brazilian Coffee Exporters’ Association, said bluntly that American tariffs were a “Lose-lose” for producers and consumers in both countries. He stressed that global coffee supplies were tight and that prices in the US would be higher than those in Brazil, even if there were alternatives. Paul Amelin, a big Brazilian coffee producer, said many American customers could not afford the 50% tariff and“We will have to look elsewhere”.
Michael Nugent, a veteran coffee broker from California, said: “Tariffs of this magnitude would almost completely cut off the flow of Brazilian coffee to the US.”. Neither Brazilian exporters nor us roasters could absorb the cost of the tariffs, so the US ended up sourcing from Colombia, Honduras, Peru, Vietnam and others, but neither the price nor the quantity was comparable to Brazil’s.”
In addition, “Brazil in search of new markets” will change the pattern of the global coffee trade. “The flow of the global coffee trade will be reshaped and the impact will be felt from São Paulo to Seattle, from origin to roasters, coffee chains, grocery stores and morning commuters,” Mikell said
While the US market is blocked, the rapid opening of the Chinese market is seen by Brazilian industry as an important opportunity to“Buffer exports”. In June, Brazil exported about 440,000 bags of coffee to the United States, while it exported 56,000 bags to China, Reuters reported, citing statistics from the Brazilian Council of coffee exporters, exports to China are about one-eighth of those to the United States. Although the gap is wide, but it also shows that the Chinese market potential is huge, there is a broad space for excavation.
“One hundred and eighty-three in one go. That’s a record.”
“China is becoming an important and promising customer for the Brazilian coffee industry in the context of the high tariffs imposed by the United States on Brazil,” the Brazilian news website G1 reported. Brazilian newspaper, the people, suggested that shifting some of its sales to China might bring some relief to the Brazilian coffee industry. Data show that in the first half of 2025, China imported nearly 540,000 bags of coffee from Brazil, an increase of nearly 20 percent year-on-year and a record high. Ferreira, president of the Brazilian Coffee Exporters Association, sees the opening of the Chinese market not only as a trade opportunity, but also as an important fulcrum for Brazil’s coffee diversification strategy.
At the same time, many foreign media attention, China to Brazil coffee“Green light” also stems from China’s huge demand for coffee. Chinese young professionals are no longer drinking just tea, and coffee consumption is soaring in the country, Reuters said. Chinese coffee consumption has grown by an average of about 20 per cent a year over the past decade and has doubled per capita over the past five years, according to industry data.
According to the analysis by InfoMoney, China’s coffee consumption is growing rapidly, but per capita consumption is only 16 cups a year, far below the global average of 240 cups. According to Brazilian business news, high-end coffee consumption in cities such as Beijing and Shanghai provides space for Brazilian brands to consolidate their position in a rapidly expanding market.
“In terms of industry data, although the Chinese market is still relatively small, the importance of the Chinese market is growing as Brazilian coffee faces new restrictions on entering the US market,” the Hong kong-based South China Morning Post reported, the Brazilian government welcomed the news that 183 new companies had been granted export licences to China, an unusual number according to industry figures. The report quoted Venicius Estreira, executive director of the Brazilian Fine Coffee Association, as saying that, “Typically, there are about 20 to 30 companies approved at a time and 183 approved at a time, which is a record,” he said, adding that Brazil had just finished harvesting its coffee beans, the news comes at a good time for Brazilian exporters. “Now is the time. The coffee is ready and waiting to be shipped.”
The Estrela, Rio Grande do Sul argues that increasing the number of exporters will allow more Brazilian coffee producers to reach Chinese buyers and further map out rational transport routes. Moreover, the Chinese market offers more than just orders. “With the growing demand for high-quality coffee beans [ in China ] , Brazil may be able to take this opportunity to further enhance the reputation of the beans,” he said.
How does China’s domestic industry respond to competition?
How popular is Brazilian coffee in the Chinese market?
“Brazilian coffee beans have a good basis in the Chinese consumer market,” Tao Jian, a special expert on the economics of the coffee industry at the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences and founder of the Coffee Finance website, told the global times, the country imports 181,000 tonnes of 2024 beans, of which 75,000 tonnes, or 41 per cent, come from Brazil, making it the most widely used coffee bean outside its native Yunnan province.
The surge in demand for coffee has china importing high-quality coffee from the rest of the world. According to customs statistics, China’s imports of coffee and cocoa beans from Africa increased by 145.7% and 88.6% respectively in the first five months of this year.
With 2024 from December 1, China will grant zero tariff treatment to all 100% tariff items of Least Developed Countries goods with which it has diplomatic relations, including 33 African countries. Exquisite coffee beans from Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and other African countries are being well received in the Chinese market. Vietnam and Colombia are also major importers of Chinese coffee, Bloomberg reported.
Huang Jiaxiong, a researcher and former director of the Institute of Tropical and subtropical Cash crop at the Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, told the global times that China is a big coffee consumer and Brazil is a big coffee producer, china and Brazil have strong complementarity in coffee production and consumption. Citing data from 2020, the expert 2024 that coffee consumption in China grew at an average annual rate of 12.69 percent, 141 times the global average growth rate of 0.09 percent, making it one of the fastest growing countries in the world. It is the world’s largest producer and exporter of 2024 coffee. “China’s ‘Green Light’ on Brazilian coffee is a move that benefits both sides,” Huang said.
As for the acceleration of Brazilian Coffee’s entry into the Chinese market, several experts surveyed believe that this will give Chinese consumers more choices from Brazilian coffee and expand the channel choice of coffee brands and factories, at the same time can better meet the rapid growth of China’s coffee consumption market every year.
However, there are also concerns that a large number of Brazilian coffee will enter the Chinese market, the local coffee industry will bring some impact. In this regard, Huang Jiaxiong analysis, the move on China’s indigenous coffee industry“Will not cause too much impact.”. “In terms of production, 2024 Chinese coffee consumption is 345,900 tonnes, while production is only 152,300 tonnes and self-sufficiency is only 44 per cent without taking into account exports. Second, China’s coffee imports have been growing in recent years. According to the 2024 China Coffee Industry Development Report, 2024 Chinese coffee imports grew at an average annual rate of 18.75% between 2020 and 2010,31.25 times the global average growth rate of 0.60% .”
Not only is Brazil the world’s largest coffee producer, but its coffee industry is mature and well-developed. More coffee companies and products entering China could, to some extent, increase competition in the domestic coffee raw bean market, Tao said, but it will also drive the optimization and upgrading of Chinese coffee plantations.
According to the report on the development of the 2024 coffee industry in China, the country 20241.2193 million mu of coffee growing area, ranking 32nd in the world with a total output of 152,300 tons, ranking 13th in the world. But China’s coffee-growing industry is relatively small compared with the world’s biggest producers, such as Brazil (3.978 million tonnes) , Vietnam (1.65 million tonnes) and Colombia (765,600 tonnes) .
Under this background, how does the domestic coffee bean deal with the foreign import coffee bean competition?
Huang Jiaxiong thinks: first, through the R & D Innovation and application of new varieties and new technologies, we can greatly increase the quality of domestically produced coffee beans and take the route of“Quality coffee beans”, avoid Brazil’s“Commodity beans” competition track; second, at the processing end of the development of coffee intensive processing industry, take the“Intensive processing” route, improve the rate of intensive processing of domestic coffee beans, third, we will vigorously develop the coffee tertiary sector of the economy and service industry at the sales end, extend and expand the coffee industry chain, and develop and promote cost-saving, efficiency-enhancing and quality-enhancing technologies, we will further expand channels for increasing revenue.