By DEE-ANN DURBIN, Associated Press Business Writer

The world’s fondness for matcha is about to be tested by steep price increases.

Global demand for the powdered tea has skyrocketed around the world, fueled by consumer interest in its health benefits and by the bright green matcha lattes bubbling up on social media. In the U.S., retail sales of matcha are up 86% from three years ago, according to NIQ, a market research firm.

But the matcha market is troubled. In Japan, one of the biggest matcha producers, poor weather reduced this year’s harvest. Matcha is still plentiful in China, another major producer, but labor shortages and high demand have also raised prices there.

An iced matcha latte is served at Asha Tea House on Friday, Sept. 5, 2025, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Haven Daley)

For Americans, there’s the added impact of tariffs. Imports from China are currently subject to a 37.5% tariff, while the U.S. has a 15% tariff on imports from Japan. It’s not clear if tea will be exempted from tariffs because it’s a natural product that’s not grown in significant quantities in the U.S. — an accommodation that the Trump administration has made for cork from the European Union. The Commerce Department and the U.S. Trade Representative didn’t respond to messages left by The Associated Press.

Aaron Vick, a senior tea buyer with California-based tea importer G.S. Haly, says he paid 75% more for the highest-grade 2025 crop of Japanese matcha, which will arrive in the U.S. later this fall. He expects lower grades of matcha to cost 30% to 50% more. Chinese matcha — while generally cheaper than Japanese matcha — is also getting more expensive because of high demand, he said.

“People should expect an enormous increase in the price of matcha this year,” Vick said. “It’s going to be a bit of a tough ride for matcha devotees. They will have to show the depth of their commitment at the cash register.”

Senior Tea Buyer Aaron Vick uses a whisk to make a matcha drink inside The G.S. Haly Company’s tea tasting room in Redwood City, Calif., Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Haven Daley)

Even before this year’s harvest, growing demand was straining matcha supplies. Making matcha is precise and labor intensive. Farmers grow tencha — a green tea leaf — in the shade. In the spring, the leaves are harvested, steamed, de-stemmed and de-veined and then stone ground into a fine powder. Tencha can be harvested again in the summer and fall, but the later harvests are generally of lower quality.

There are ways to cut corners, like using a jet mill, which grinds the leaves with high pressure air. But Japan has other issues, including a rapidly aging workforce and limited tencha production. And despite Japanese agricultural ministry trying to coax tea growers to switch to tencha from regular green tea, many are reluctant to do so, concerned that the matcha boom will fade.

That’s giving an opening to China, where matcha originated but fell out of favor in the 14th century. Chinese matcha production has been growing in recent years to meet both domestic and international demand.

Chinese matcha has historically been considered inferior to Japanese matcha and used as a flavoring for things like matcha-flavored KitKat bars instead of as a drinking tea. But the quality is improving, according to Jason Walker, the marketing director at Firsd Tea, the New Jersey-based U.S. subsidiary of Zhejiang Tea Group, China’s largest tea exporter.

“We are seeing more and more interest in Chinese matcha because of capacity issues and changing perception,” Walker said. “It used to be the idea that it has to be Japanese matcha or nothing. But we have a good product too.”

Starbucks is among the companies using matcha from China for its lattes. The company said it also sources matcha from Japan and South Korea. Dunkin’ and Dutch Bros. didn’t respond when asked where they source the matcha.

Josh Mordecai, the supply chain director for London-based tea supplier Good & Proper Tea, said he is approached almost daily by Chinese matcha suppliers. For now, he only buys matcha from Japan, but the cost to acquire it has risen 40% so he’ll have to raise prices, he said.

Mordecai said he saw more demand for matcha in the last year than in the previous nine years combined. If matcha prices continue to rise, he wonders if consumers will switch to other tea varieties like hojicha, a roasted Japanese green tea.

“We’ll see if this is a bubble or not. Nothing stays on social media that long,” Mordecai said.

Julia Mills, a food and drink analyst for the market research company Mintel, expects the social media interest in matcha to die down. But she thinks matcha will remain on menus for a while.

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Mills said matcha appeals to customers interested in wellness, since it contains antioxidants and l-theanine, an amino acid known for its calming effects, and it’s less caffeinated than coffee. Millennials and Generation Z customers are more likely to have tried matcha than others, Mills said.

The traditional way of preparing it, whisking the powder together with hot water in a small bowl, also appeals to drinkers who want to slow down and be more intentional, Mills said.

That’s true for Melissa Lindsay of San Francisco, who whisks up some matcha for herself every morning. Lindsay has noticed prices rising for her high-end matcha, but it’s a habit she’d find hard to quit.

“It’s not just a tea bag in water,” Lindsay said. “It’s a whole experience of making it to your liking.”

David Lau, the owner of Asha Tea House in San Francisco, hopes to keep customers drinking matcha by limiting price increases. Lau raised the price of his matcha latte by 50 cents after the cost the matcha he buys from Japan more than doubled. He’s also looking into alternate suppliers from China and elsewhere.

“We’re in the affordable luxury business, you know, just like any other specialty cafe. We want people to be able to come every day, and once you reach a certain price level, you start to price people out,” he said. “We want to be really cognizant and aware of not doing that.

AP Video Journalist Haven Daley contributed from San Francisco.

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump filed a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times and four of its journalists on Monday, according to court documents.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Florida names several articles and one book written by two of the publication’s journalists and published in the lead up to the 2024 election, saying they are “part of a decades-long pattern by the New York Times of intentional and malicious defamation against President Trump.”

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“Defendants published such statements negligently, with knowledge of the falsity of the statements, and/or with reckless disregard of their truth or falsity,” the lawsuit says.

The New York Times did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment early Tuesday.

In a Truth Social post announcing the lawsuit, Trump accused The New York Times of lying about him and defaming him, saying it has become “a virtual ‘mouthpiece’ for the Radical Left Democrat Party.”

Trump has gone after other media outlets, including filing a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the The Wall Street Journal and media mogul Rupert Murdoch in July after the newspaper published a story reporting on his ties to wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein.

For many decades, politicians of both parties and almost all economists have recognized the independence of the U.S. Federal Reserve as a cornerstone of the American economy — and indeed the world economy. The Fed’s independence itself fuels the U.S.’s prominence in the world economy and supports international and domestic investment. Recent reports, while rarely naming names, assure us that both Democratic and Republican members of Congress continue to believe all of this.

What can Congress do, though, if President Donald Trump wins his battle to remove members of the Fed’s Board of Governors? Let us imagine the worst (but likely) future and assume that the Supreme Court would back the president, either by holding that statutory protections limiting removals by requiring “cause” are unconstitutional, or by holding that anything the president says is cause is enough. (To be clear, I think the court would be wrong to say either of these, but I think it quite possible it will do so.) If this were to happen, Congress would be hard-pressed to write a new statute that creates pre-termination hearings or otherwise seeks to limit the power of the president that would satisfy the court’s aggressive support for presidential removals.

Congress, however, should not wait. Congress should immediately act to preserve the Fed’s independence. Even waiting for this to play out in the courts will be damaging and uncertain.

How can Congress respond? The first and most obvious move is that a majority of senators should immediately announce that they will not confirm any new nominees for the Fed until the terms of the existing member expires (barring death or resignation). Of course, the Senate can play even harder ball by refusing to act on any nominees or pausing action on any legislation. Perhaps in a retaliatory response, the president would fire even more of the Fed’s governors. (Though it is hard to believe the president would wholly disable the Fed, as his stated goal is for it to lower rates, after all.) If a firing spree does ensue, Congress will simply have to fight back. But it need not come to that — if Congress shows sufficient resolve on confirmations.

At the same time, and with a view toward avoiding future crises, the Senate should quickly form an expert committee of economists and others to recommend new governors, and a bipartisan majority of senators must commit that it will only confirm nominees from its list. Of course, the senators need to actually respect standards of economic expertise and integrity, but so far this has largely worked out in the history of the Fed — with both presidents and senators doing so. At a time in which the president does not care about expertise (or economics, really), the Senate must build its own real capacity to evaluate candidates. And it can take the lead. The Senate does not have the power to nominate, but it can make clear who it will and won’t confirm. These sorts of negotiations happen between the president and congressional leadership all the time.

Another option would see the Senate restore the filibuster to its confirmation process for the Fed’s nominees. This seems a further reach, however, and has the feeling of another political process; the first two steps commit the Senate to respecting expertise and independence.

The House can also play hardball, if a bipartisan majority of representatives supports Fed independence — as they do and should. The House’s tools are blunter, by stalling other legislation, especially appropriations. But the House as well as the Senate can hold oversight hearings and leadership has a bully pulpit to push back. The House can form its own expert committees, and more in-house economic expertise in both chambers is deeply needed.

In the Constitution’s vision, Congress — not the executive — should have the lead in setting national policy, economic and otherwise. The Senate’s authority to confirm or deny the president’s nominees is incontrovertible. It is well past time, and particularly important here, that Congress act to protect the Fed’s independence. It can do so with just a few relatively clear steps.

Congress must start doing its job, and this is the perfect — and a fundamentally important — place to begin.

James B. Speta holds the Elizabeth Froehling Horner professor of law and commerce at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. He wrote this column for the Chicago Tribune.

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Today is Tuesday, Sept. 16, the 259th day of 2025. There are 106 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Sept. 16, 1982, the massacre of more than 1,300 Palestinian men, women and children at the hands of Israeli-allied Christian Phalange militiamen began in west Beirut’s Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

Also on this date:

In 1810, Catholic priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla called on his parishioners to join him in a rebellion against Spanish rule, marking the beginning of the Mexican War of Independence.

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In 1893, the largest land run in U.S. history occurred as more than 100,000 white settlers rushed to claim over more than 6 million acres of land in what is now northern Oklahoma.

In 1908, General Motors was founded in Flint, Michigan, by William C. Durant.

In 1940, Samuel T. Rayburn of Texas was first elected speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives; he would hold the post for a record 17 years, spanning three separate terms.

In 1966, the Metropolitan Opera officially opened its new opera house at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts with the world premiere of Samuel Barber’s “Antony and Cleopatra.”

In 1974, President Gerald R. Ford signed a proclamation announcing a conditional amnesty program for Vietnam war deserters and draft evaders.

In 2007, O.J. Simpson was arrested in the alleged armed robbery of sports memorabilia collectors in Las Vegas. (Simpson was later convicted of kidnapping and armed robbery and sentenced to nine to 33 years in prison; he was released in 2017.)

In 2013, Aaron Alexis, a former U.S. Navy reservist, went on a shooting rampage inside the Washington Navy Yard, killing 12 people before being fatally shot police.

In 2018, at least 17 people were confirmed dead from Hurricane Florence as catastrophic flooding spread across the Carolinas.

Today’s Birthdays:

Actor George Chakiris is 93.
Actor Ed Begley Jr. is 76.
Author-historian-filmmaker Henry Louis Gates Jr. is 75.
Country singer David Bellamy (The Bellamy Brothers) is 75.
Actor Mickey Rourke is 73.
Jazz musician Earl Klugh is 72.
TV personality Mark McEwen is 71.
Baseball Hall of Famer Robin Yount is 70.
Magician David Copperfield is 69.
Actor Jennifer Tilly is 67.
Retired MLB All-Star pitcher Orel Hershiser is 67.
Baseball Hall of Famer Tim Raines is 66.
Singer Richard Marx is 62.
Comedian Molly Shannon is 61.
Singer Marc Anthony is 57.
News anchor/talk show host Tamron Hall is 55.
Comedian-actor Amy Poehler is 54.
Singer-songwriter Musiq Soulchild is 48.
Rapper Flo Rida is 46.
Actor Alexis Bledel is 44.
Actor Madeline Zima is 40.
Actor Max Minghella is 40.
Rock singer-musician Nick Jonas (The Jonas Brothers) is 33.
Actor Chase Stokes is 33.
Golfer Bryson Dechambeau is 32.