I streamed “Hamilton” earlier this month — in fact, on Aug. 6, the day the musical celebrated its 10th birthday — compelled by my partner’s confession of never having seen the smash Broadway show (gasp!).
He later admitted to being surprised by how much he enjoyed it. I found it nearly as exciting, as thrilling as when I first saw the production, from a high balcony seat in the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Broadway in October 2017.
Except that this time, I knew all the words to the songs. (To an obnoxious degree.)
How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean … .
The way I look at it, you’re either a hard-core fan of the Lin-Manuel Miranda creation, or … you’re wrong.
Ayo I’m just like my country, I’m young, scrappy and hungry, I am not throwing away my shot … .
And even after a decade, “Hamilton” (based on a 2004 biography of Alexander Hamilton written by Ron Chernow) is as fresh — as revolutionary — in subsequent viewings to me because, above all, it entertains. Hard.
I remember that after that New York performance, I sat stunned at what I had just witnessed, then being jarred back to my senses by the roar of the standing ovation. Wow.
I’ve been a Broadway series subscriber at the Denver Center for decades, and no other performance before or since has had me so, well, high on the art. When the national touring company performed “Hamilton” at the Buell Theater in Denver in 2018, and again in 2024, I was there. When it came to Disney+ in 2020, of course I got a subscription so I could revisit the magic. (Yes, I used the word “magic” and Disney in the same sentence.)
And every time, I am driven anew to read up on the facts behind the man and the history. Some things you may not know about “Hamilton”:
It took Miranda about seven years to write the lyrics and music for the smash Broadway musical, and a full year to write one song: “My Shot.” Ariana DeBose played The Bullet in the original cast, including the off-Broadway version.
Hamilton did, in fact, advise his son to not fire his weapon in the duel that led to the 19-year-old’s death.
George Eacker, who fired that fatal shot, died of tuberculosis two years later, at the age of 29.
Hamilton and his wife, Eliza Schuyler, had eight children. Their second child, Angelica, suffered a breakdown after Philip’s death and spent the rest of her life in an asylum.
Miranda earns a 3% royalty every time “Hamilton” is performed. He currently is worth about $80 million.
Miranda played Hamilton in the musical on Broadway for less than a year, starting with its debut in 2015.
Despite its popularity, “Hamilton” is not the highest-grossing Broadway show of all time. That honor goes to “The Lion King.” Hercules Mulligan, Alexander Hamilton, John Laurens and the Marquis de Lafayette didn’t actually meet at the same time in a pub in 1776, as depicted in the musical. (“Raise a glass to the four of us, tomorrow there’ll be more of us.”) Hamilton met Mulligan three years earlier, and likely was introduced to both Lafayette and Laurens after 1777.
While it’s hard to tell from “Hamilton,” the American Revolution lasted eight years.
Aaron Burr was the grandson of theologian and preacher Jonathan Edwards.
Hamilton did engage in flirtatious correspondence with Angelica Schuyler, the sister of his wife, Eliza. (The cad.)
Historical inaccuracies are also brought up, such as that there is no inkling that Hamilton, who once worked on a slave ship, was actually against slavery at all (in fact, few whites of the time came out against the heinous practice). While the musical implies that he was pro-immigration, his support for the Alien and Sedition Acts (which restricted immigration and citizenship) weakens that argument.
So much for the most humorous line: “Immigrants, we get the job done.”
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However, one common complaint is a stretch: that the female characters are only there to support the men. Um, it was the 1700s, remember? (I thought Miranda did his best to give Angelica Schuyler opinions and grit, for what it’s worth.)
The New York Times recently called “Hamilton” “the Broadway hit that coupled hip-hop music with the Founding Fathers — an unlikely pairing that forever changed ticket prices and spurred an era of race-conscious casting.”
And I will likely be there. Because, when it comes to “Hamilton” — and taking the liberty (get it?) to paraphrase King George III — I’ll love you ’til my dying days.
Jonnell Wieder earned too much money at her job to keep her Medicaid coverage when the COVID-19 public health emergency ended in 2023 and states resumed checking whether people were eligible for the program. But she was reassured by the knowledge that Medicaid would provide postpartum coverage for her and her daughter, Oakleigh McDonald, who was born in July of that year.
Wieder is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes in Montana and can access some health services free of charge through her tribe’s health clinics. But funding is limited, so, like a lot of Native American people, she relied on Medicaid for herself and Oakleigh.
Months before Oakleigh’s 1st birthday, the date when Wieder’s postpartum coverage would come to an end, Wieder completed and returned paperwork to enroll her daughter in Healthy Montana Kids, the state’s version of the Children’s Health Insurance Program. But her paperwork, caught up in the lengthy delays and processing times for applications, did not go through.
“As soon as she turned 1, they cut her off completely,” Wieder said.
It took six months for Wieder to get Oakleigh covered again through Healthy Montana Kids. Before health workers in her tribe stepped in to help her resubmit her application, Wieder repeatedly called the state’s health department. She said she would dial the call center when she arrived at her job in the morning and go about her work while waiting on hold, only for the call to be dropped by the end of the day.
“Never did I talk to anybody,” she said.
Jonnell Wieder is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. (Tommy Martino/KFF Health News/TNS)
Jonnell Wieder and daughter Oakleigh McDonald’ s experience is an example of the chaos for eligible Medicaid beneficiaries caused by the process known as the“ unwinding,” which led to millions of people in the U.S. losing coverage due to paperwork or other procedural issues. (Tommy Martino/KFF Health News/TNS)
Jonnell Wieder and daughter Oakleigh McDonald’ s experience is an example of the chaos for eligible Medicaid beneficiaries caused by the process known as the“ unwinding,” which led to millions of people in the U.S. losing coverage due to paperwork or other procedural issues. (Tommy Martino/KFF Health News/TNS)
Jonnell Wieder and daughter Oakleigh McDonald’ s experience is an example of the chaos for eligible Medicaid beneficiaries caused by the process known as the“ unwinding,” which led to millions of people in the U.S. losing coverage due to paperwork or other procedural issues. (Tommy Martino/KFF Health News/TNS)
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Jonnell Wieder is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. (Tommy Martino/KFF Health News/TNS)
Wieder and Oakleigh’s experience is an example of the chaos for eligible Medicaid beneficiaries caused by the process known as the “unwinding,” which led to millions of people in the U.S. losing coverage due to paperwork or other procedural issues. Now, tribal health leaders fear their communities will experience more health coverage disruptions when new federal Medicaid work and eligibility requirements are implemented by the start of 2027.
The tax-and-spending law that President Donald Trump signed this summer exempts Native Americans from the new requirement that some people work or do another qualifying activity a minimum number of hours each month to be eligible for Medicaid, as well as from more frequent eligibility checks. But as Wieder and her daughter’s experience shows, they are not exempt from getting caught up in procedural disenrollments that could reemerge as states implement the new rules.
“We also know from the unwinding that that just doesn’t always play out necessarily correctly in practice,” said Joan Alker, who leads Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families. “There’s a lot to worry about.”
The new law is projected to increase the number of people who are uninsured by 10 million.
The lessons of the unwinding suggest that “deep trouble” lies ahead for Native Americans who rely on Medicaid, according to Alker.
Changes to Medicaid
Trump’s new law changes Medicaid rules to require some recipients ages 19 to 64 to log 80 hours of work or other qualifying activities per month. It also requires states to recheck those recipients’ eligibility every six months, instead of annually. Both of these changes will be effective by the end of next year.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated in July that the law would reduce federal Medicaid spending by more than $900 billion over a decade. In addition, more than 4 million people enrolled in health plans through the Affordable Care Act marketplace are projected to become uninsured if Congress allows pandemic-era enhanced premium tax credits to expire at the end of the year.
Wieder said she was lucky that the tribe covered costs and her daughter’s care wasn’t interrupted in the six months she didn’t have health insurance. Citizens of federally recognized tribes in the U.S. can access some free health services through the Indian Health Service, the federal agency responsible for providing health care to Native Americans and Alaska Natives.
But free care is limited because Congress has historically failed to fully fund the Indian Health Service. Tribal health systems rely heavily on Medicaid to fill that gap. Native Americans are enrolled in Medicaid at higher rates than the white population and have higher rates of chronic illnesses, die more from preventable diseases, and have less access to care.
Medicaid is the largest third-party payer to the Indian Health Service and other tribal health facilities and organizations. Accounting for about two-thirds of the outside revenue the Indian Health Service collects, it helps tribal health organizations pay their staff, maintain or expand services, and build infrastructure. Tribal leaders say protecting Medicaid for Indian Country is a responsibility Congress and the federal government must fulfill as part of their trust and treaty obligations to tribes.
Lessons Learned During the Unwinding
The Trump administration prevented states from disenrolling most Medicaid recipients for the duration of the public health emergency starting in 2020. After those eligibility checks resumed in 2023, nearly 27 million people nationwide were disenrolled from Medicaid during the unwinding, according to an analysis by the Government Accountability Office published in June. The majority of disenrollments — about 70% — occurred for procedural reasons, according to the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
CMS did not require state agencies to collect race and ethnicity data for their reporting during the unwinding, making it difficult to determine how many Native American and Alaska Native enrollees lost coverage.
The lack of data to show how the unwinding affected the population makes it difficult to identify disparities and create policies to address them, said Latoya Hill, senior policy manager with KFF’s Racial Equity and Health Policy program. KFF is a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.
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The National Council of Urban Indian Health, which advocates on public health issues for Native Americans living in urban parts of the nation, analyzed the Census Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey and KFF data in an effort to understand how disenrollment affected tribes. The council estimated more than 850,000 Native Americans had lost coverage as of May 2024. About 2.7 million Native Americans and Alaska Natives were enrolled in Medicaid in 2022, according to the council.
The National Indian Health Board, a nonprofit that represents and advocates for federally recognized tribes, has been working with federal Medicaid officials to ensure that state agencies are prepared to implement the exemptions.
“We learned a lot of lessons about state capacity during the unwinding,” said Winn Davis, congressional relations director for the National Indian Health Board.
Nevada health officials say they plan to apply lessons learned during the unwinding and launch a public education campaign on the Medicaid changes in the new federal law. “A lot of this will depend on anticipated federal guidance regarding the implementation of those new rules,” said Stacie Weeks, director of the Nevada Health Authority.
Staff at the Fallon Tribal Health Center in Nevada have become authorized representatives for some of their patients. This means that tribal citizens’ Medicaid paperwork is sent to the health center, allowing staff to notify individuals and help them fill it out.
Davis said the unwinding process showed that Native American enrollees are uniquely vulnerable to procedural disenrollment. The new law’s exemption of Native Americans from work requirements and more frequent eligibility checks is the “bare minimum” to ensure unnecessary disenrollments are avoided as part of trust and treaty obligations, Davis said.
Eligibility Checks Are ‘Complex’ and ‘Vulnerable to Error’
The GAO said the process of determining whether individuals are eligible for Medicaid is “complex” and “vulnerable to error” in a 2024 report on the unwinding.
“The resumption of Medicaid eligibility redeterminations on such a large scale further compounded this complexity,” the report said.
It highlighted weaknesses across state systems. By April 2024, federal Medicaid officials had found nearly all states were out of compliance with redetermination requirements, according to the GAO. Eligible people lost their coverage, the accountability office said, highlighting the need to improve federal oversight.
In Texas, for example, federal Medicaid officials found that 100,000 eligible people had been disenrolled due to, for example, the state system’s failure to process their completed renewal forms or miscalculation of the length of women’s postpartum coverage.
Some states were not conducting ex parte renewals, in which a person’s Medicaid coverage is automatically renewed based on existing information available to the state. That reduces the chance that paperwork is sent to the wrong address, because the recipient doesn’t need to complete or return renewal forms.
But poorly conducted ex parte renewals can lead to procedural disenrollments, too. More than 100,000 people in Nevada were disenrolled by September 2023 through the ex parte process. The state had been conducting the ex parte renewals at the household level, rather than by individual beneficiary, resulting in the disenrollment of still-eligible children because their parents were no longer eligible. Ninety-three percent of disenrollments in the state were for procedural reasons — the highest in the nation, according to KFF.
Another issue the federal agency identified was that some state agencies were not giving enrollees the opportunity to submit their renewal paperwork through all means available, including mail, phone, online, and in person.
State agencies also identified challenges they faced during the unwinding, including an unprecedented volume of eligibility redeterminations, insufficient staffing and training, and a lack of response from enrollees who may not have been aware of the unwinding.
Native Americans and Alaska Natives have unique challenges in maintaining their coverage.
Communities in rural parts of the nation experience issues with receiving and sending mail. Some Native Americans on reservations may not have street addresses. Others may not have permanent housing or change addresses frequently. In Alaska, mail service is often disrupted by severe weather. Another issue is the lack of reliable internet service on remote reservations.
Tribal health leaders and patient benefit coordinators said some tribal citizens did not receive their redetermination paperwork or struggled to fill it out and send it back to their state Medicaid agency.
The Aftermath
Although the unwinding is over, many challenges persist.
Tribal health workers in Montana, Oklahoma, and South Dakota said some eligible patients who lost Medicaid during the unwinding had still not been reenrolled as of this spring.
“Even today, we’re still in the trenches of getting individuals that had been disenrolled back onto Medicaid,” said Rachel Arthur, executive director of the Indian Family Health Clinic in Great Falls, Montana, in May.
Arthur said staff at the clinic realized early in the unwinding that their patients were not receiving their redetermination notices in the mail. The clinic is identifying people who fell off Medicaid during the unwinding and helping them fill out applications.
Marlena Farnes, who was a patient benefit coordinator at the Indian Family Health Clinic during the Medicaid unwinding, said she tried for months to help an older patient with a chronic health condition get back on Medicaid. He had completed and returned his paperwork but still received a notice that his coverage had lapsed. After many calls to the state Medicaid office, Farnes said, state officials told her the patient’s application had been lost.
Another patient went to the emergency room multiple times while uninsured, Arthur said.
“I felt like if our patients weren’t helped with follow-up, and that advocacy piece, their applications were not being seen,” Farnes said. She is now the behavioral health director at the clinic.
Montana was one of five states where more than 50% of enrollees lost coverage during the unwinding, according to the GAO. The other states are Idaho, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah. About 68% of Montanans who lost coverage were disenrolled for procedural reasons.
In Oklahoma, eligibility redeterminations remain challenging to process, said Yvonne Myers, a Medicaid and Affordable Care Act consultant for Citizen Potawatomi Nation Health Services. That’s causing more frequent coverage lapses, she said.
Myers said she thinks Republican claims of “waste, fraud, and abuse” are overstated.
“I challenge some of them to try to go through an eligibility process,” Myers said. “The way they’re going about it is making it for more hoops to jump through, which ultimately will cause people to fall off.”
The unwinding showed that state systems can struggle to respond quickly to changes in Medicaid, leading to preventable erroneous disenrollments. Individuals were often in the dark about their applications and struggled to reach state offices for answers. Tribal leaders and health experts are raising concerns that those issues will continue and worsen as states implement the requirements of the new law.
Georgia, the only state with an active Medicaid work requirement program, has shown that the changes can be difficult for individuals to navigate and costly for a state to implement. More than 100,000 people have applied for Georgia’s Pathways program, but only about 8,600 were enrolled as of the end of July.
Alker, of Georgetown, said Congress took the wrong lesson from the unwinding in adding more restrictions and red tape.
“It will make unwinding pale in comparison in terms of the number of folks that are going to lose coverage,” Alker said.
This article was published with the support of the Journalism & Women Symposium (JAWS) Health Journalism Fellowship, assisted by grants from The Commonwealth Fund.
By PATRICK WHITTLE and MAE ANDERSON, Associated Press
OLD ORCHARD BEACH, Maine (AP) — The case of a Maine police officer arrested by immigration authorities even though he was vetted by a government system called “E-Verify” has raised questions about what employers can do to make sure they’re employing people who can legally work.
E-Verify is an online system that compares information entered by an employer from an employee’s documents with records available to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration. It’s used to determine the employment eligibility of citizens and noncitizens.
Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin accused Old Orchard Beach, Maine, of “reckless reliance” on the E-Verify program when it hired Jamaica national Jon Luke Evans, who was later detained and agreed to leave the country earlier this month.
But it’s the government’s own program. And experts say there’s not a whole lot more employers can do in terms of vetting.
“I think employers are between a rock and a hard place,” said Madeline Zavodny, an economics professor at the University of North Florida. “Even an employer who is trying to comply with the law can have difficulty doing it.”
What is E-Verify?
Before 1986, it was essentially legal for employers to hire people regardless of their immigration status. Then came the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which involved a large-scale immigrant legalization program that was paired with a requirement that employers no longer hire people who weren’t legally authorized to work in the U.S.
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Employers then had to fill out a form called an I-9, which required workers to present documents showing that they were authorized to work. But it was difficult to verify if the documents were valid. As part of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, the E-Verify system was established to help verify those documents.
Unlike I-9 forms, which are federally required for every employer, E-Verify is mandated on a state-by-state basis, otherwise it is voluntary. According to an Equifax tally, about 23 states require E-Verify for at least some public and/or private employers.
Zavodny said the system is generally accurate in terms of matching documents, but there are flaws. For example, if an employee’s right to work is revoked after it has already been verified — perhaps if their visa expires — it doesn’t automatically notify the employer.
A lack of biometrics also hinders the process. If there’s a photo in the E-Verify system, manual photo matching by the employer helps. But a lot of times, there’s no photo in the system.
And the system is not without critics. A 2021 review of E-Verify by the Office of the Inspector General concluded that until U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services addresses the system’s shortcomings, “it cannot ensure the system provides accurate employment eligibility results.”
Trump pushed for more E-Verify use
The federal government’s disagreement with Old Orchard Beach over E-Verify’s reliability came despite pushes by President Donald Trump and his allies to bring the system into wider use. Project 2025, the blueprint for Trump’s second term, calls for it to be mandatory.
Use of the system is not widespread. Barely a fifth of U.S. employers use it, though some huge businesses do, including Walmart, Starbucks and Home Depot.
Language calling for mandatory nationwide E-Verify was dropped from budget proposals during the first Trump administration. The system has also faced criticism from some employers.
An Omaha, Nebraska, food packaging company owner said a raid of his business by immigration officials this year came despite his use of E-Verify for employees. Glenn Valley Foods owner Gary Rohwer said in June that the business “did everything we could possibly do” to hire eligible workers.
Rohwer didn’t respond to requests for comment this month. Old Orchard Beach officials declined to comment on the town’s recent troubles. DHS officials also didn’t respond.
Others say they’ve had good experiences with the system. Kyle Sobko, CEO of SonderCare, a Calgary, Alberta-based company that makes hospital beds for the home, has a staff of 50, including 20 in the U.S.
He uses E-Verify and said he hasn’t had any problems.
“We trust the system for its reliability and integration with our hiring process,” he said.
Sobko said the situation in Old Orchard Beach raises some concerns about the system’s limitations. But he doesn’t plan on making any changes since the warning about “reckless reliance” on E-Verify.
Experts say reliance is not reckless
Despite the system’s flaws, characterization of E-Verify use as “reckless” is an “outrageous” claim, said Kathleen Campbell Walker, a Texas attorney who is a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
Walker described the process as “not a get out of jail free card” for prospective employees, but as one that has evolved over the years and become more robust in its ability to provide accurate background checks.
Walker said McLaughlin’s description of “reckless reliance” on E-Verify should give employers pause.
“The whole idea is that I’m supposed to rely on E-Verify to show my good faith and to have a more secure workforce,” she said. “Not that reliance upon it is somehow irresponsible.”
Advocates for the rights of immigrants have said instances in which employees clear the E-Verify system but end up arrested by immigration officials anyway point to a broken immigration system.
“We have an immigration system that is not functioning to the extent that a federal system would both clear someone to work and at the same time, they could somehow get onto ICE’s radar,” said Molly Curren Rowles, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Going beyond E-Verify can be risky
Small businesses are in a tough spot since they don’t necessarily have the resources or motivation to do more than what is required to verify employment eligibility status.
“Businesses should not be in the business of being the paperwork investigator for the federal government,” said Frank Knapp Jr., president & CEO of the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce. “The federal government ought to be doing that.”
Knapp has pushed back on his state’s mandate for E-Verify because he said it puts too much of the onus on small business owners.
“It’s an extra layer of administration just to do the E-Verify for small businesses, and the federal government is saying, oh, you do this because you want to verify that somebody is in this country legally,” he said. “But now their own administration is saying, ‘Oh, no, no. That’s not enough.’”
James M. Cooney, a labor and employment law expert in the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations in New Jersey, said it can be tricky to go beyond the basics of what’s required to verify identification without running the risk of a discrimination charge.
“If an employer tries to do more than what is permitted under the I-9 and E-Verify, that will very often be seen as illegal discrimination,” he said. “And so that really puts employers at a tough spot.”
Matcha — a green tea powder deeply rooted in Japanese tea ceremonies — has surged in U.S. popularity in recent years. Its vibrant green color has become a social media staple, flaunted by influencers and wellness-conscious consumers.
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Performative as it may seem, matcha is also addictively delicious — at least to some. To others, it just tastes like grass. But as anyone who has developed a habit for the earthy beverage will tell you, it’s also incredibly expensive.
I couldn’t possibly count how much I’ve paid for matcha since I first started drinking it in 2020 and if I could, I’d be embarrassed. In a moment of weakness, I once spent $11.50 on a latte, an unusually high price even for New York City, where I live.
But like any consumables, there’s no price ceiling — especially during a shortage, as with matcha. A limited supply combined with steep new U.S. tariffs could make both your — and my — daily fix that much more expensive.
How much does matcha typically cost?
Matcha represents a small portion of the U.S. tea market, says Peter Goggi, president of the Tea Association of USA, a trade group representing U.S. tea interests.
“The U.S. is very predominantly a black tea–drinking nation, and more than 70% of the tea consumed here is iced tea,” says Goggi. “So we’re a very different market than any other tea-consuming market in the world.”
Goggi says that matcha represents roughly 2.8% of the U.S. tea market by dollars — and even smaller by weight. At the end of the day, matcha is just powdered tencha leaves, which can be served hot or cold with water and as a latte with milk. Even so, the price can vary drastically on the shelf and in cafes depending on the location and type of matcha served.
Chains are no exception. Starbucks’s grande iced matcha latte costs $6.80 at my nearby Starbucks in Brooklyn. My colleagues logged $5.25 in Ann Arbor, Mich.; $5.89 in Tucker, Ga.; $5.95 in Ripon, Calif.; and $6.01 in Seattle. The coffee super giant recently added an upcharge for additional matcha powder.
If you make matcha at home, the price for a tin or bag of powder varies drastically by brand and amount, but also by tea leaf grade, which is used as an unofficial classification in the tea industry. One ounce of matcha can make roughly 14 servings of tea.
Ceremonial: First-harvest tencha leaves grown in shade for up to four weeks before handpicking. It’s then ground into a fine powder with a bright green hue. Ceremonial grade tea can only be sourced in Japan. It’s the most expensive of the three grades. You can purchase, at the lowest end, ceremonial grade for around $30 an ounce, but the highest quality powders can go for up to $6,000 per pound, according to Goggi.
Ready-to-drink: Made with second-harvest tencha leaves. It falls somewhere between culinary grade and ceremonial grade in taste and cost. The powder looks less vibrant than ceremonial grade, but still clearly a vivid green.
Culinary: The lowest cost matcha and is meant to be used in cooking and baking. The tencha leaves used in culinary grade matcha are typically older — third-harvest or more. The color of the powder is usually a dull brownish-green color. A typical bag of the powder can cost anywhere from $10 to $25 per ounce.
Why is there a matcha shortage?
Like most shortages, matcha’s comes down to supply and demand. In this case, demand has boomed, largely due to social media trends and appeal for health-minded consumers, says Goggi. “At this point, the pressure is almost all on matcha,” he adds.
The Global Japanese Tea Association (GJTA) reports that Japanese tea exports have grown from 1% of the country’s total production in the early 2000s to roughly 10% by the end of 2023. And in 2024, half of the 8,798 metric tons of green tea exported from Japan was matcha, according to Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.
In Kyushu, one of Japan’s four main islands, tea exports grew by 24% in 2024, largely due to matcha’s popularity, the GJTA said. The U.S. is its key export market.
Local producers in Japan are overwhelmed, even as suppliers have expanded to other nations including China and India. But ceremonial matcha, by definition, can only be produced in Japan, which puts added pressure on suppliers.
“It’s one of the few teas you can’t just ‘turn on the spout’ and make more of,” says Goggi. “It requires very specific treatment before harvest, and that takes time.”
The seasonality of matcha production makes it more difficult to meet year-round demand. Tencha plants take five years to mature and are picked once a year — in springtime. The highest grade matcha requires a certain amount of shading before it’s picked in order to boost chlorophyll and L-theanine, which affect its color and flavor. After picking, the leaves must be steamed, dried, sorted, slowly ground up using stone mills and packaged.
“Matcha only represents about 7% to 8% of total tea production in Japan, but Japan really owns the market,” says Goggi. “The entire infrastructure of tea production has declined mainly because of the aging of people involved in the tea business. Most of these farms are family-owned tea farms, so there’s a lot of pressure on tea consumption and production in Japan.”
Producing matcha is a labor-intensive process and there aren’t enough workers to meet the demand, says Goggi. The downward trend is largely due to an aging population in agriculture as fewer young workers are opting to enter tea farming.
Like most agriculture, matcha farmers also struggle with the effects of climate change, including high heat which stunts production. Last year was Japan’s hottest year on record and July marked the nation’s highest month on record.
How will tariffs affect the cost of matcha?
President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that his tariffs will boost domestic manufacturing and production. But agricultural imports are different and U.S. production won’t be able to replace Japanese supply.
“[Tea farms in the U.S.] represent 0.02% of what’s consumed in the U.S. — so it’s virtually nothing,” says Goggi. “There’s no way that the U.S. can ever be a large enough tea producer to satisfy domestic demand.”
It’s the same story with other agricultural products, like bananas or coffee. Yes, the U.S. grows some, but nowhere near the scale needed to meet consumer demand. That means that imports remain essential.
The Tax Foundation projects that 75% of all food imports will be impacted by tariffs, and says those tariffs will lead to higher prices for consumers.
Matcha is primarily sourced from Japan, which faces a 15% tariff. Secondary producers face even higher tariffs — India was recently slapped with a 50% tariff, while China currently has a 30% tariff, which could go up if a deal isn’t reached.
Unless distributors or retailers swallow the added cost, matcha prices will likely rise on store shelves, your online cart and at your local cafe. Tariffs, combined with Japan’s production limits, could push prices even higher.
“Ultimately, the price of tea will have to absorb these tariffs,” says Goggi. “And that happens on the shelf — consumers will pick it up.”
