Ralph Gaston is part of Rusty's Hawaiian Coffee, a family business on the Big Island. Rusty is his father-in-law, who grows, roasts and distributes coffee.
Gaston also runs Isla Custom Coffees, which finds markets in the U.S. and beyond for green coffee — the unroasted beans.
He recently returned from a trade show in China and told HPR about how the tariffs are affecting coffee growers in Hawaiʻi.
"Although our coffee is all here, homegrown in Hawaiʻi, and we sell to a mostly local market, and we have, obviously, online sales, which go mostly to the U.S. or Canada as well, some of the challenges could come initially from international shipping," he said.
The bags they put the coffee in have come from China in the past, he said.
"The tariffs hit the way they did, and we need to resupply. We run into a problem of obviously an increased cost on one side, but on the other side, you also have limited space. We're a small business, so we can't order 20,000 or 30,000 or 40,000 bags and have them stored here. We just don't have a place to put them," he told HPR.
Gaston said the level of uncertainty around the tariffs can make business owners hesitate and stop them from moving their business forward.
"When these levels of tariffs rise suddenly and then fall suddenly, and they only fall temporarily, you end up in a wait-and-see mode. And when you're growing a coffee farm, for instance, it takes three years for a coffee tree to produce any fruit at all, and five years for it to be 100% fully mature," he said.
He added that you need to have some certainty that you're going to have a market five years out.
"We love being part of the Hawaiʻi community. We want to be able to have a product that can be shared with everyone here in the island, with people in the U.S., people overseas, and to keep the connections over coffee that have gone on time in memoriam. But this part of what's going on with the tariffs really makes it difficult to understand how we can keep going," he told HPR.
This story aired on The Conversation on May 28, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Tori DeJournett adapted this story for the web.
