| The global food trade that delivers everything from fruit to coffee around the world faces being fractured by the escalating tariff war. Levies imposed by US President Donald Trump this week include 21% on top cocoa producer Ivory Coast and 46% on No. 2 coffee grower Vietnam. The measures — and retaliatory ones like those from China announced on Friday — highlight the prospect of trade disruption and food becoming more expensive in many countries. That’s bad news for an intricate global food system providing everyday goods that many people take for granted. In the history of agricultural trade, there hasn’t been a moment before where there were so many goods shipped around the world, according to Justin van der Sluis, the global head of food and agriculture research at Rabobank. “We’re at a moment of global peak trade in agriculture,” he said. “Now these tariffs directly break that system.” In his executive order, Trump pointed to an agricultural trade deficit for America, and food being a critical infrastructure sector as reasons for imposing tariffs. Guessing how the trade war will play out is far from easy. China on Friday slapped a 34% tariff on all imports from the US starting April 10. In addition to countermeasures, van der Sluis expects some countries will soon reach new agreements with the US. “This is a very interesting period of time, but also very difficult to make sense of and to exactly predict what is going to happen,” he said. For crucial staples like grains and oilseeds, the US may struggle to move its products to Asia amid countermeasures. Here are some other examples of the impact of the trade war: Pricier Coffee Vietnam is the leading producer of robusta coffee, the variety used in instant drinks. The tariffs threaten to disrupt flows and come as coffee costs have already soared on the back of harvest shortfalls. While there has been an incentive to use the cheaper robusta variety, the world’s top arabica grower Brazil has been hit by a lower 10% baseline tariff, which potentially makes the higher-end arabica beans a more appealing option, according to TRS by Expana. Chocolate Tariffs on major cocoa-growing nations could deal a blow to US chocolate makers, making the cost of supplies relatively more expensive than in other regions. Chocolatiers have already struggled as a supply shortage sent cocoa futures to a record high in December. Still, that’s giving European chocolate firms a competitive advantage over those in the US. Wine French wines and spirits are set to take a 20% hit on sales to the US amounting to €800 million ($880 million), said Gabriel Picard, president of the French federation of wine and spirit exporters FEVS. European wine growers have already been struggling with a decline in consumption. Following a rush to ship bottles to the US before the tariffs, European wineries have seen orders dry up from their top customer abroad. Loss for US Farmers The trade war is set to hurt American farmers, too. As Bloomberg Opinion’s Javier Blas says, they’ll lose out from a drop in wholesale prices, while foreign buyers will switch to alternative producers like Brazil, Argentina and Australia. Russia, which is rapidly emerging as one of the world’s largest exporters of grains, will also benefit. —Agnieszka de Sousa in London | 
