Surprise Food Tariff Cut Helps HSY, MKC, CAG Most — Digest of Major Company Impacts

By Jonathan Feeney and David Schick and David Katzman and Jack Hermann Published on November 17, 2025 PDF

Surprise Food Targeted Tariff Relief. On Friday, the Trump administration announced the immediate rollback of tariffs on dozens of food related items, in an apparent attempt to lower grocery bills. This followed putative food related tariff relief announced late Thursday related to trade frameworks with several Central & South American countries.

Beef, Cocoa, Coffee, Specialty Ingredients Most Impacted. While the new tariff relief includes dozens of items (link here: annex.pdf) that could have many impacts, it’s most meaningful in high value & specialty food & beverage input commodities not sourced in the U.S. Those impacts, in turn, are most meaningful to companies with U.S. centric businesses.

HSY, MKC, CAG Most Impacted. We note all companies will experience a lag in any cost impacts given inventory and marketplace dynamics. We rank HSY first in potential tailwind because it was already poised to experience a significant margin benefit from the ongoing cocoa price correction (see Cost Factor 11/14/2025).

We’ve compiled select recent public company transcript commentary on tariff impact in rough order of materiality, below:

HSY said, on 10/30/25, tariffs $200 million incremental (175 bps margin impact). This is in addition to our calculated -15.1% EBIT tailwind from spot cocoa cost declines. Management has previously noted several dollars of EPS impact from cocoa cost headwinds.

MKC said, on 10/7/2025, $140 million annualized. This would be a roughly 200 bps margin impact.
CAG said, on 11/12/25, 3% of material cost inflation — which was 60% of COGS – a 180 bps margin impact.

KHC said, on 7/30/2025, annualized impact of 180 bps to cost inflation. This would be a roughly 50 bps margin impact

GIS said, on 9/2/25, 1%-2% of costs.

MDLZ said, on 4/29/25, a small but manageable impact.
KDP said, on 10/27/25, expect impact from green coffee & tariffs to build into fourth quarter.

FDP said, on 10/29/25, that tariff impact was passed on to consumers and “minimal, not much.”

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