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.
"Theproblem started with a shortageof the main ingredient inchocolate cocoa beans, extremeweather in West Africa, wheremost of the cocoa on the planetcomes from, caused bad harvests," Egan said.
"So you had a situation wheresupply was crashing, and demandwas not, and prices had nowhereto go but up," Egan explained. "Cocoa prices. Theywent from around $2,500 a metricton to almost 13,000, a Hersheyexecutive told CNN's Kate Bolduan earlier this week thatthe company experiencedunprecedented cocoa inflation.And the problem is that a lot ofthe chocolate on the storeshelves right now, they arestill priced at or near thosecrisis levels now, the goodnews, however, is that priceshave started to come down forcocoa, and analysts are hopefulthat prices will start toflatten out, hopefully by Easterand ideally start to come downin time for Halloween."
Other potential Valentine's Day gifts are also seeing price jumps.
"Now, asyou mentioned, it's not justchocolate that's gotten moreexpensive," Egan told CNN anchor Boris Sanchez. "Some other go-to giftideas for Valentine's Day alsogoing up in price. If you lookat flowers and indoor plantstoday's inflation report showeda 6% year over year increase.Their jewelry up by 7%, and thatlikely reflects those steep U.S.tariffs on imports."
Although it might not be all bad news, Egan added.
"But I dowant to leave you with some goodnews and some possible gift-buying ideas if you're lookingat cosmetics and perfume, thoseprices are only up by 1%," he said. "That's less than the overallrate of inflation, and wine isactually cheaper than thispoint. Last year it's down by 1%,so Boris, maybe you want to gothe red wine and perfume routethis year because those pricesat least are doing a little bitbetter than chocolate."