President Donald Trump‘s tariffs have hit an important product ahead of Valentine’s Day — chocolate.
CNN reporter Matt Egan described why chocolate prices have soared more than 14% higher than the more than 7% price hike compared to 2025. But it’s not only chocolate prices that are climbing as a result of Trump’s tariffs and inflation, plus other international factors.
“The problem started with a shortage of the main ingredient in chocolate cocoa beans, extreme weather in West Africa, where most of the cocoa on the planet comes from, caused bad harvests,” Egan said.
“So you had a situation where supply was crashing, and demand was not, and prices had nowhere to go but up,” Egan explained. “Cocoa prices. They went from around $2,500 a metric ton to almost 13,000, a Hershey executive told CNN’s Kate Bolduan earlier this week that the company experienced unprecedented cocoa inflation. And the problem is that a lot of the chocolate on the store shelves right now, they are still priced at or near those crisis levels now, the good news, however, is that prices have started to come down for cocoa, and analysts are hopeful that prices will start to flatten out, hopefully by Easter and ideally start to come down in time for Halloween.”
Other potential Valentine’s Day gifts are also seeing price jumps.
“Now, as you mentioned, it’s not just chocolate that’s gotten more expensive,” Egan told CNN anchor Boris Sanchez. “Some other go-to gift ideas for Valentine’s Day also going up in price. If you look at flowers and indoor plants today’s inflation report showed a 6% year over year increase. Their jewelry up by 7%, and that likely reflects those steep U.S. tariffs on imports.”
Although it might not be all bad news, Egan added.
“But I do want to leave you with some good news and some possible gift-buying ideas if you’re looking at cosmetics and perfume, those prices are only up by 1%,” he said. “That’s less than the overall rate of inflation, and wine is actually cheaper than this point. Last year it’s down by 1%, so Boris, maybe you want to go the red wine and perfume route this year because those prices at least are doing a little bit better than chocolate.”
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