The federal government is being
forced to return more than $165
billion in collected
tariffs to domestic importers,
and the online portal to request
those refunds went live this
week.
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down
President Trump's tariffs, resulting
in the order to refund
the import taxes.
Wisconsin businesses are looking to
get some relief, including
Viroqua-based Wonder state
coffee. With its three locations
across the state.
CEO T.J.
Simansion joins us now from Faroqua
and thanks a lot for being here.
Good to be here, thank you.
So first question, how much
did tariffs cost you?
Yeah, we paid almost
$140,000
in tariffs last year.
That's a big number
for any business,
but in this tariff discussion,
is coffee unusual because
it's almost all imported?
Yeah, we had been saying this from
the get-go that we really didn't
understand the purpose or the
intent of taxing
and tariffing a product that
we can't even, you know,
promote domestic production of.
All coffee is grown in the tropics,
there's a tiny bit grown in Puerto
Rico and Hawaii, but not
close to being able to meet
the U.S. Demand.
So we were, you know,
paying a tax that we didn't
understand what the impact
was for.
So, describe
for me where you
sourced your coffee from, what
country.
Yeah, we source a lot of coffee from
Latin America,
from places that people think about
coffee, like Colombia, but also
Peru,
Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico,
and then also in Africa.
We bring in a lot coffee from
Ethiopia, which is the birthplace of
coffee, and also smaller
countries like Rwanda
and Burundi, Kenya.
Did you ever reach out to
your U.S.
Representatives or other trade
officials about
the fact that
coffee is almost
100% imported?
I did for sure.
Yeah, I reached out to all of
our elected officials,
Derek Van Orden here in our
Congressional Third District, and
I even went to D.C.
Last year and got a chance
to speak to some senators
and share
our frustration and
trying to just lend our voice
as a small business, but
also a small business that is
importing what is a
international product.
What of the cost of the tariffs
meant for your business?
Yeah, last year it was really
challenging.
It was unexpected.
You know, my 25 years in coffee,
we've never even once
considered a tariff
on our coffee that
we import.
So it was a curve ball
and already in a challenging
business climate where other
costs are going up like healthcare,
shipping costs, things like that,
that this was just one more.
A headache, and again,
not being expected at
all. We had to deal with these
costs. One of the things that people
don't quite realize is we
had to pay for the tariff before we
even got the product in the country.
So this is before we could even sell
it. We had a borrow money to
pay the tarif.
So we were then paying interest
costs on the
money we borrowed for the tariffs.
So all these things were compounding
and just making it harder and harder
for us.
Have you gone online to request a
refund?
And if so, how is that process
going?
Yeah, we technically are not the
importer of record.
So we work with brokers who do
a lot of the logistics for us.
So their names are the ones that
are on record for being the
importers. So we're working with
them as
one of their clients.
And they are applying
for those refunds.
And we haven't gotten any word of
what the progress is.
There's a lot uncertainty on how
this process is going to unfold.
Did those tariffs,
as significant as they were for
a small business, get passed along
then to your customers?
Yeah, in some way or fashion,
they did. We had, again, last year
was challenging in a lot of ways.
Coffee itself, the
cost, the commodity price of
coffee skyrocketed last
year.
So we were paying a tariff
on what was already
a historical cost
for coffee.
So all these things were compounding
and we did have a price increase
last year that we passed on to
our customers.
And tariffs were a part of that.
So the, you know, how much
of that was the tariffs, gets a
little confusing and, you know,
just because there was a lot of
factors.
What has business planning been
like over the course of these
changeable tariffs?
You mean the change that just
the recent change in tariffs or
just the changing back and forth?
Changing back and forth and through
the course of it and the uncertainty
and how to
plan for future business.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, we had to
re-forecast our profit in
our budget last year.
We even pulled back on
some investments in
growth.
We decided not to buy
a piece of equipment last
year just because of the business
climate.
This would have been expanding
our production capabilities.
And this was a piece of equipment
that the one that we were looking at
was mostly built in Wisconsin.
So we did not invest
and we did make that purchase.
So you can see even where the ripple
effects might be.
But we did pull back on
our kind of expectations
for growth and profit
and even hiring and
being able to invest in our staff.
That.
You know, coming into 2026
with the change in tariffs.
And it feels like, you know we are
a little more optimistic kind of
going, we're going back a whole year
where we kind of came into 2025.
We're kind of coming back into 20,
26 with that perspective.
But I would say that it felt like
a whole year of just kind of a
holding pattern.
How optimistic are you that you will
get the tariffs that you
paid refunded?
I'm a pretty optimistic person,
so I put our chances at better than
50 percent, but again, I'll
believe it when the
money is in our bank, because
again, this has been such an
uncertain process from the
beginning.
We're hoping that the administration
doesn't fight as
this portal is
open and money actually starts
flowing that they don't
cut off those funds, but we
don't know.
We're not.
We're not counting on it until we
actually have the money in our bank,
which might be months or a year from
now. We don't know.
Not banking out.
All right, T.J.
Simansion, thanks very much.
All right, thank you.
Thank you, sir.
All right, you're welcome.
Now back to coffee roasting and
tasting and badging and salad.
Back to it.
Yeah.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, you have a good day.
Take care.