revolution

NEW YORK — A tax on tea once sparked rebellion. This time, it’s just causing headaches.

Importers of the prized leaves have watched costs climb, orders stall and margins shrink under the weight of President Trump’s tariffs. Now, even after Trump has given them a reprieve, tea traders say it won’t immediately undo the damage.

“It took a while to work its way through the system, these tariffs, and it will take a while for it to work its way out of the system,” says Bruce Richardson, a celebrated tea master, tea historian and purveyor of teas at his shop, Elmwood Inn Fine Teas, in Danville, Ky. “That tariffed tea is still working its way out of our warehouses.”

While some bigger firms are behind the biggest supermarket brands, the premium tea market is largely the work of smaller businesses — family farms, specialty importers and a web of little tea shops, tea rooms and tea cafes across the U.S. Amid an onslaught of tariffs, they have become showcases for the levies’ effects.

On their shelves, selection has narrowed, with some teas missing because they’re no longer viable products to stock with the steep levies. In their warehouses, managers are consumed with uncertainty and operational headaches, including calculating what a blend really costs, with ingredients from multiple countries on a roller coaster of tariffs. And in backrooms where the wafting scent of fresh tea permeates, owners have been forced to put off job postings, raises, advertising and other investments so they can have cash available to pay duties when their containers arrive at U.S. ports.

“If I were to add up all the money I’ve spent on tariffs that weren’t there a year ago, it could equal a new employee,” says Hartley Johnson, who owns the Mark T. Wendell Tea Co. in Acton, Mass.

Johnson’s prices used to stay static for a year or longer. He ate the tariff costs before being forced to respond. His most popular tea, a smoky Taiwanese one called Hu-Kwa, has steadily risen from $26 to $46 a pound.

He knows some customers are reconsidering.

“Where is that tipping point?” Johnson asks. “I’m kind of finding that tipping point is happening now.”

That tipping point already came for one tea company in the City of Commerce.

International Tea Importers, already under financial strain from climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, said that tariffs were the final blow, creating an untenable cash flow crunch and forcing its closure after 35 years in business.

“We just became over-leveraged financing — not just the inventory, but also the tariffs,” says the company’s chief executive, Brendan Shah.

Despite the other financial challenges, if not for the tariffs, Shah says, it may have survived.

“Unpredictable tariff policies,” he wrote to customers in announcing the company’s closure, “have created the final, insurmountable barrier.”

Though Trump backed off some tariffs on agricultural products last week, many in the tea trade are wary of celebrating too soon and caution tea drinkers shouldn’t either. Much of next year’s supply has already been imported and tariffed, and the full impact of those duties may not have fully spilled downhill.

Meantime, other tariff-driven price hikes persist. All sorts of other products tea businesses import, such as teapots and infusers, remain subject to levies, and costs for some American-made items, like tins for packaging, have spiked because they rely on foreign materials.

“The canisters, the bamboo boxes, the matcha whisks, everything that we import, everything that we sell has been affected by tariffs,” says Gilbert Tsang, owner of MEM Tea Imports in Wakefield, Mass.

Though globally tea reigns supreme, imbibed more than anything but water, it has long been overshadowed by coffee in the U.S. Still, tea is entwined in American history from the very beginning, even before colonists angry with tariffs dumped tons of it in Boston Harbor.

Boston may run on Dunkin’ today, but it was born on tea.

The 1773 revolt that became known as the Boston Tea Party rose out of the British Parliament’s implementation of tea tariffs on colonists, who rejected taxation without representation in government. After an independent United States was born, one of the new government’s first major acts, the Tariff Act of 1789, ironically set in law import taxes on a range of products including tea. In time, though, trade policy came to include carve-outs for many products Americans rely on but don’t produce.

For more than 150 years, most tea has passed through U.S. ports with little to no duties.

That began to change in Trump’s first term with his hard-line approach to China. But nothing compared to what came with his return to the White House.

In July, the most recent month for which the U.S. International Trade Commission has tallied tariff numbers, tea was taxed at an average rate of over 12%, a huge increase from a year earlier when it was just under one-tenth of a percent. In that single month, American businesses and consumers paid more than $6 million in tea import taxes, amassing in just 31 days more tariffs than any previous full year on record.

“All over again, taxation without representation,” says Richardson, an advisor to the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum. “Our wants and needs and our voices are not being represented because Congress is avoiding the issue by simply allowing the president to act like George III.”

All told, tea importers paid about $19.6 million in tariffs in the first seven months of 2025, nearly seven times as much as the same period last year.

It’s all been confounding to those steeped in the world of tea, on which the U.S. depends on foreign countries for nearly all of the billions of pounds Americans brew each year. Though a number of small tea farms exist in the U.S., they can’t fill Americans’ cups for more than a few hours of the year.

Said Angela McDonald, president of the United States League of Tea Growers: “We don’t have an industry and we can’t produce one overnight.”

Sedensky writes for the Associated Press.

Behind the scenes the changes have been seismic.

The motivation was twofold.

As they assessed the inner workings of the club, senior figures around the ownership concluded it was “over-dimensioned”, according to one observer close to the process.

In other words, there were too many people and too many jobs.

They found a structure which they felt required United to be playing in the Champions League every season and competing to win the Premier League. Failure put a strain on finances.

Having reached such a view and with losses so high, slashing staff numbers was a harsh but inevitable reality.

An initial cull of 250 staff within months of Ratcliffe’s arrival was carried out to get the numbers down.

It is accepted internally that the pain created was extensive, the shock huge.

It was the second round of 200 redundancies this year that allowed the hierarchy to pursue a different staffing model, so finance could be used in what was felt to be a more efficient way.

Nowhere is the impact of that more evident than in United’s data operation.

In an interview with the popular United We Stand fanzine in December 2024, Ratcliffe described the club’s approach to data analysis as being in the “last century”.

It was felt that Formula 1 was the sport at the cutting edge of data and AI use. The performance of every single component is monitored in fine detail, and success and failure can be measured in hundredths of a second.

As a result, Michael Sansoni’s arrival from the Mercedes F1 team as director of data in April was one of the least surprising moves.

Sansoni has completely revamped United’s data capabilities, which are now being used extensively across performance, recruitment and training.

Precise details of the work Sansoni has implemented are a closely guarded secret, but one source said the work of United’s data and analytics team has accelerated to such a degree it is now “among the top four teams”.

Following the second set of job cuts there was a strategic focus to bring in what have been described as “versatile people who are multi-faceted and multi-skilled to help in multiple areas”.

It is the senior appointments that really catch the eye, though.

A quick list of new arrivals among senior staff at the Old Trafford club unearths 19 names.

Not all the exits were forced and, as at any big organisation, a change in ownership can lead to movement further down – but the scale of change has been significant.

Two notable figures remain: Collette Roche and Martin Mosley.

Chief operating officer Roche is leading United’s representation around their proposed 100,000-capacity new stadium and the wider Old Trafford regeneration.

Mosley joined United in 2007 and took over as general counsel in the summer of 2024 following the departure of Patrick Stewart, who is now chief executive at Rangers.

Roche and Mosley’s presence is regarded as a crucial link to the pre-Ratcliffe era while those running the club get a full understanding of the scale of United, which can come as a shock, even for those – like chief executive Omar Berrada (Barcelona/Manchester City), chief business officer Marc Armstrong (Paris St Germain), performance director Sam Erith (Manchester City/Tottenham/FA) and director of recruitment Christopher Vivell (Chelsea/Red Bull) – with experience of working at big clubs.

Trusted Ineos figure Roger Bell has become United’s chief finance officer and Kirstin Furber has arrived from Channel 4 as people director.

But it goes much further. A head of sports medicine and, for the first team, a new doctor, a new physio and a new performance chef. Experts in nutrition and soft tissue treatment. Academy director. Media director. All part of the nuts and bolts at a leading Premier League club in 2025.

So many significant figures from the previous era, who negotiated key deals, treated players and presented the public face of the club, have gone.

No-one can be sure if the future will be better.

As with every other club, external judgement of the success or failure of off-field change can be swift and it is almost always connected to results of the first team, which by their nature can hinge on arbitrary moments.

There is an acceptance internally at United of an unquantifiable lag time between inception of new processes and their outcome.

Sometimes, though, it becomes obvious a certain move has failed.

Dan Ashworth clearly falls into that category. Highly respected in the game, Ashworth’s willingness to leave Newcastle to take up the job of sporting director is still felt at Old Trafford to be a positive and reflected well on the changes being made and future direction anticipated.

However, after United paid Newcastle £3m in compensation, within five months he was gone.

Sources deny that a split occurred around the choice of Ten Hag’s replacement.

But there was a difference of opinion, the respective views of how Ashworth’s job should work did not fit and a parting of the ways – with another compensation payment, in the region of £4m – was viewed as the inevitable outcome.