US coffee imports from Brazil jumped 86.4% once the tariff went

Brazilian coffee exports do not usually hinge on a customs list. In September they did. The Council of Brazilian Coffee Exporters published its monthly bulletin on 9 October 2026, and the top line looked unremarkable: 3.894 million 60 kg bags shipped against 3.778 million a year earlier, a rise of 3.1%. The movement sits one row further down, in the column for a single buyer.

What the September count actually showed

Flat, by the standards of a market that has lurched for two years. The nine-month total is flatter still: 29.095 million bags between January and September, 0.2% below the same stretch of 2025.

The crop year reads differently. July through September produced 11.210 million bags against 9.707 million a year ago, up 15.5%. Rain in July held the harvest back, and the new beans only began reaching the ports in August.

The number underneath the headline

One destination did all the moving. The United States took 625,192 bags of Brazilian coffee in September, against 335,339 in September 2025. That is 86.4% more in a single month, and the harvest does not explain it: the September export bulletin shows total volume barely moving at all.

How the coffee tariff exemption changed the flow

American buyers had been waiting out a rule. Washington dropped its tariff on most Brazilian coffee in November 2025, but the soluble coffee tariff stayed on until July 2026, when soluble entered the exception lists as well. Cecafé president Márcio Ferreira puts the September recovery down to the end of that uncertainty rather than to any change in price, and says the coffee tariff exemption let bilateral business restart.

Uncertainty is its own tariff. A roaster who cannot price a contract six months out does not sign it, and the volume turns up later in a different month. A similar pattern sat under July’s export numbers, where one species carried a whole month of growth.

Volume came back, the money did not

September revenue fell 7.1% to $1.282 billion. Across the first nine months the gap is wider: $10.113 billion against $11.065 billion, down 8.6% on volume that hardly moved. Coffee export revenue is falling for three reasons at once, and only one of them is the market price.

The other two sit inside the bags. Arabica coffee shipments came to 20.739 million bags from January to September, 10.7% below last year and still 71.3% of everything Brazil sent out. Canephora coffee, the conilon and robusta side, reached 5.162 million bags, up 68.3%. Ferreira points to rain damage in the first arabica lots as well: weaker quality, weaker price. What is in a cargo now moves earnings as much as the daily price indicators do.

Where Brazilian coffee exports went instead

Two months of American buying were enough to reshuffle the table. For January to September the United States sits back on top with 3.805 million bags, 13.1% of all shipments, even though that total is still 12.8% below the same period last year. Germany, which had held first place, lands at 3.307 million bags and 11.4% of the total, itself down 11.4%. Belgium is up 44.5%, Japan down 23.3%.

Ferreira expects shipments to pass last year’s level before the end of 2026. That is a projection, not a count. The species split is already counted, and it is the part that reaches a cup first. A blend rebuilt around 68.3% more canephora does not announce itself on the front of a bag. Look at the back, where the origin and the species are usually printed in six point type.