By MICHAEL PHILLIS, TRAVIS LOLLER and M.K. WILDEMAN

The worst water Colt Smith has seen in 14 years with Utah’s Division of Drinking Water was at a mobile home park, where residents had been drinking it for years before state officials discovered the contamination.

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The well water carried cancer-causing arsenic as much as 10 times the federal limit. Smith had to put the rural park under a do-not-drink order that lasted nearly 10 years.

“The Health Department refers it to us like … ‘Why aren’t you guys regulating it?’ We had no idea it existed,” he said.

More than 50 years after the Safe Drinking Water Act was passed to ensure that Americans’ water is free from harmful bacteria, lead and other dangerous substances, millions of people living in mobile home parks can’t always count on those basic protections.

A review by The Associated Press found that nearly 70% of mobile home parks running their own water systems violated safe drinking water rules in the past five years, a higher rate than utilities that supply water for cities and towns, according to Environmental Protection Agency data. And the problems are likely even bigger because the EPA database doesn’t catch all parks.

Even where parks get water from an outside source — such as a city — the clean water coming in can become contaminated if it passes through problematic infrastructure before reaching residents’ taps. Because the EPA doesn’t generally require this water to be tested and regulated, the problems may go unseen.

Utah is one of the few states to step in with their own rules, according to an AP survey of state policies.

“If you look back at the history of the Safe Drinking Water Act, like in the ’70s when they were starting, it was, ‘Well, as long as the source … is protected, then by the time it gets to the tap, it’ll be fine.’ And that’s just not how it works,” Smith said.

The challenge of being ‘halfway homeowners’

In one Colorado mobile home park, raw sewage backed up into a bathtub. In a Michigan park, the taps often ran dry and the water resembled tea; in Iowa, it looked like coffee — scaring residents off drinking it and ruining laundry they could hardly afford to replace. In California, boxes of bottled water crowd a family’s kitchen over fears of arsenic.

Almost 17 million people in the U.S. live in mobile homes. Some are comfortable Sun Belt retirees. Many others have modest incomes and see mobile homes as a rare opportunity for home ownership.

To understand how water in the parks can be so troubled, it’s useful to remember that residents often own their homes but rent the land they sit on. Despite the name, it’s difficult and expensive to move a mobile home. That means they’re “halfway homeowners,” said Esther Sullivan, a professor of sociology at the University of Colorado in Denver who lived in several mobile home parks as she researched a book. Residents often put up with “really egregious” property maintenance by landlords because all their money is tied up in their home, she said.

Pamela Maxey, 51, of Kalamazoo, Michigan, said she had forgotten what it was like to have reliable, clean water until she traveled to her state Capitol last year to advocate for better mobile home park protections and stayed in a hotel. By then, she had spent eight years in a park where sewage backed up into homes and the flow of tap water was sometimes weak or discolored.

“It wasn’t until I went into the bathroom to take a shower that I realized, ‘I don’t have to jump in here and squint my eyes closed the entire time and make sure water doesn’t get in my mouth because I don’t know what’s in it,’” she said. “I went to brush my teeth, and I just turned the faucet on and I brushed my teeth from the water coming from the faucet. I haven’t been able to do that for over a year.”

Victoria Silva, a premed student in Fort Collins, Colorado, estimates the water in Harmony Village Mobile Home Park where Silva lives went out or lost pressure 20 to 30 times over roughly three years there.

Residents at Oasis Mobile Home Park walk past water tanks in Thermal, Calif., Tuesday, April 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

“People don’t realize how much water they need until the water is out for five minutes when they need to flush, when they need to rinse something off their hands, when they need to make some pasta,” Silva said.

The park’s owner says a licensed professional ensures water is maintained and tested, and outages are minimized.

Small water companies, serial problems

The U.S. has some 50,000 water utilities, most serving small towns and rural areas. Many struggle to find expert staff and funding, and they violate clean water rules more often than the handful of large utilities that serve cities. But even among the hard-pressed small utilities, mobile home parks stand out.

The AP analysis found that more than half these parks failed to perform a required test for at least one contaminant, or failed to properly report the results, in the past five years. And they are far more likely to be repeat offenders of safe drinking water rules overall.

But that’s only part of the story. The true rates of mobile home park violations aren’t knowable because the EPA doesn’t track them well. The agency’s tap water violation database depends on information from states that often don’t properly categorize mobile home parks.

When Smith first searched Utah’s database in response to an AP request for data from all 50 states, he found only four small water systems identified as belonging to mobile home parks. With some keyword searches, he identified 33 more.

Cases of bottled drinking water are stored under a kitchen counter in the home of Agustin and Ricarda Toledo in Oasis, Calif., Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Other parks aren’t in the databases at all and may be completely unregulated.

One July day in 2021, officials with the EPA were out investigating sky-high arsenic levels in the tap water at Oasis Mobile Home Park in the Southern California desert when they realized the problem went way beyond just one place.

“It was literally us driving around and going, ‘Wait a minute, there’s a bunch of mobile home parks!’” said Amy Miller, who previously served as EPA’s head of enforcement for the Pacific Southwest region.

The water in these other parks had been off their radar. At some, testing found high levels of cancer-causing arsenic in the water that had been provided to residents for years.

It’s impossible to know how many unnoticed parks are out there. Most states aren’t actively looking for them and say they find very few. In Colorado, after the state passed a new law to require water testing at all mobile home parks, officials uncovered 79 parks with their source of water unknown. That’s about a tenth of the total parks in the state.

Pipes ‘like spaghetti’ in the ground

Many parks are decades old with aging pipes that can cause chronic water problems, even if the water that supplies the park is clean when it enters the system.

Jake Freeman, the engineering director at Central States Water Resources, a Missouri-based private utility company that specializes in taking over small water systems in 11 states, said substandard and poorly installed pipes are more common to see in mobile home parks.

“A lot of times, it’s hard to find the piping in the mobile home parks because if there’s any kind of obstruction, they just go around it,” he said. ”“It’s like spaghetti laying in the ground.”

After a major winter storm devastated Texas in 2021, Freeman said, the company found pipes at parks it had taken over that “were barely buried. Some of them weren’t buried.”

When pipes break and leak, the pressure drops and contaminants can enter water lines. In addition, parks sometimes have stagnant water — where pipes dead-end or water sits unused — that increases the risk of bacterial growth.

Rebecca Sadosky is public water supply chief in North Carolina, where mobile home communities make up close to 40% of all water systems. She said owners don’t always realize when they buy a park that they could also be running a mini utility.

“I think they don’t know that they’re getting into the water business,” she said.

It doesn’t have to be like this

Utah is a rare state that enforces safe drinking water standards even within mobile home parks that get their water from another provider, according to AP’s survey of states. A small number of other states like New Hampshire have taken some steps to address water safety in these parks, but in most states frustrated residents may have no one to turn to for help beyond the park owner.

Victoria Silva brushes their teeth with filtered water Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2025, in Fort Collins, Colo. (AP Photo/Brittany Peterson)

In Colorado, when Silva asked officials who enforces safe drinking water rules, “I just couldn’t get clear answers.”

Steve Via, director of federal regulations at the American Water Works Association utility group, argued against regulating mobile home parks that get their water from a municipality, saying that would further stretch an already taxed oversight system. And if those parks are regulated, what’s to stop the rules from extending to the privately owned pipes in big apartment buildings — the line has to be drawn somewhere, he said.

Via said residents of parks where an owner refuses to fix water problems have options, including going to their local health departments, suing or complaining publicly.

Silva is among the advocates who fought for years to change Colorado’s rules before they succeeded in passing a law in 2023 that requires water testing in every mobile home park. It gives health officials the ability to go beyond federal law to address taste, color and smell that can make people afraid to drink their water, even when it’s not a health risk. The state is now a leader in protecting mobile home park tap water.

Smith, the Utah environmental scientist, said stopping the contaminated water flowing into the mobile home park and connecting it to a safe supply felt like a career highlight.

He said Utah’s culture of making do with scarce water contributed to a willingness for stronger testing and regulations than the federal government requires.

“There’s sort of the communal nature of like, everybody should have access to clean water,” he said. “It seems to transcend political ideologies; it seems to transcend religious ideologies.”

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

By Henry Payne, The Detroit News

There’s never a dull moment in the U.S. market as automakers hustle to divine consumer trends, navigate federal regulations, juggle tariff-driven plant production, and dodge activist Molotov cocktails.

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The first six months of 2025 saw robust sales on track for an annual 16.3 million in unit sales as gas prices dropped and tariffs rose. America’s love affair with trucks and SUVs continued with sales making up 82% of the light vehicle market. Just 10 years ago, cars made up 43% of the market. This year? Just 18%.

General Motors Co. brands led the herd with 17.6% of the market, followed by Japanese behemoth Toyota Motor Corp. at 15.2% and Ford Motor Co. with 13.6%, according to Autodata figures. The General gobbled a point-and-a-half of market share while its two closest rivals also gained.

On other other hand, compared to 2015, Stellantis NV (then Fiat Chrysler Automobiles) declined to 7.4% from 12.3% and Nissan fell to 6% from 8.7%, stumbling while a company named Tesla Inc. (despite losses the last 12 months) came out of nowhere to reach a 3.3% share versus 0.1% a decade ago.

Enough macro, let’s talk micro. Dig deeper and the numbers reveal a raft of rivalries and rages. What are the best-sellers? Are EVs still the bee’s knees? Is Wrangler tying up Bronco?

The Detroit News sifted the numbers.

Best-sellers. The Ford F-Series and Chevy Silverado continue to slug it out in the marquee pickup duel. F-Series was King of Sales (again) with 412,848 units sold over Silverado’s 284,038. Throw in Chevy’s premium sibling GMC Sierra, however, and the GM twins are tops with 453,220 units combined.

A year ago, three non-pickup SUVs were climbing their way to the 400,000-plus sales summit: Toyota RAV4 (248,295), Tesla Model Y (198,030), and Honda CR-V (196,204). This year, RAV4 (239,451) and CR-V (212,561) are on pace again, but Model Y has hit a pothole with just 150,171 in sales — a victim of the slow rollout of its remade 2025 model and an often violent, anti-Tesla campaign aimed at Trump ally and brand CEO, Elon Musk.

EVs. Tesla Model 3 took up some of the slack, registering a 38% sales jump (to 101,323 units) with its re-worked sedan. So popular is the Model 3 that it not only was the hands-down best-selling luxury sedan (out-selling its closest competitor and segment icon, the BMW 3-series, 7:1), but it outsold every mainstream compact sedan except for the Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla.

Alas, for government regulators targeting 60% EV adoption by 2030, Model 3 sales were an anomaly as the electric market flat-lined at 7.4% share of the market, according to Cox Automotive, despite an expanded menu of offerings.

“The consumer tolerance level for EVs is about 7-8% of the market with all the federal incentives in place,” said ISeeCars.com senior analyst Karl Brauer in an interview. “And as those incentives go away over the next year, we expect to see EV sales continue to slide.”

Despite losing 6% market share in 2025, Tesla still dominated EV sales with 44.7% of the pie. Winners so far are the Chevy Equinox EV, which vaulted to third place in the EV beauty contest in its first stage appearance — its 27,749 sales eclipsing the best sales year of Chevy’s previous entry-level EV, the Bolt, by over 4,000 units.

Equinox EV’s sales paled next to its internal-combustion-engine-powered stablemate, the redesigned Equinox, which surged nearly 50% with 157,638 units sold.

Amidst the EV stall, Honda Motor’s first two battery-mobiles — the Honda Prologue and Acura ZDX — shared GM’s Ultium platform and combined to sell 26,652 units. That’s more than the combined 22,053 units sold by their peer, mid-size GM products built on the same platform: the Chevy Blazer EV and Cadillac Lyriq.

Muscle cars. The Mustang vs. Challenger vs. Camaro war ended as Stellantis and GM exited the segment — for now — to focus capital on EVs. Only Mustang is still standing.

Yet, the pony car icon didn’t profit from its rivals’ demise, losing 14% of sales year-over-year to 23,551 units from 27,444.

“Muscle cars are a discretionary purchase, and their sales decline is evidence of consumer concern about the broader economy,” said analyst Brauer. “These cars also have dedicated buyer groups like pickup trucks. Challenger people are not going to buy a Mustang.”

Not even EV muscle-inspired customers. After ditching its Challenger and Charger V-8 models under regulatory duress, Dodge debuted an earth-pawing, all-electric Charger EV coupe that sold just 4,299 units — well below the 21,217 sold by the Challenger ICE coupe as it rode into the sunset this time last year.

Jeep v. Bronco. At the heart of SUV-mania is the battle for off-road supremacy between the Jeep Wrangler and Ford Bronco. Wrangler continued to lead the horse race with 85,624 sales (11% gain over ‘25), but Bronc is coming fast.

Revived in 2021 after a 25-year hiatus from the market, Bronco surged past the Toyota 4Runner with 72,063 sold — a 43.7% gain and within striking distance of King Wrangler.

“Wrangler has the advantage of consistent, decades-long production and a loyal fan base,” said Brauer. “Ford has a huge, built-in audience from its trucks, but Bronco’s growth suggests it is pulling in a lot of non-Ford loyalists as well.”

Bronco’s halo appeared to help sales of its more affordable junior sibling, the Bronco Sport, which doesn’t share Big Brother’s ladder frame but is still plenty tough. Its 72,438 units tallied a 21.7% gain over a year ago.

Sedan sunset. In 2015, six of the Top Ten best-selling U.S. vehicles were sedans, led by the Toyota Camry. This year, only Camry made the Top 10.

Forty brands vied for U.S. market attention a decade ago. This year that number is 48 as new players like Ineos, Polestar and Rivian test the waters. The next six months’ tariffs and EV welfare pullback will test them as well.

©2025 www.detroitnews.com. Visit at detroitnews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Adams’ Charter Revision Commission has proposed measures to accelerate affordable housing production in the parts of the city that have produced the least, a move that has drawn criticism from councilmembers and community boards.

Mayor Eric Adams at the groundbreaking for an affordable housing project in 2022. (Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

On this lawmakers agree: there isn’t enough affordable housing in New York City. But how to build it, and where? Not so much.

Mayor Eric Adams’ Charter Commission voted Monday to advance four land use ballot proposals aimed at reducing the time and cost to producing housing. But they would come at a price: some erosion of the City Council’s powers over land use.

New Yorkers will get to vote on the plans in November’s general election. 

One of the changes targets specific neighborhoods. The affordable housing “fast track” would half how long it takes new projects with income-restricted units to go through land use review in certain community districts that have produced less affordable housing than the rest of the city.

The commission and its supporters say that will make it easier to build, while detractors say it will limit the local community’s voice in how their neighborhood looks.

“If you are in the bottom 12 community districts for affordable housing production, it is because virtually nothing is being built in the community district at all. So communities don’t have a voice,” said Alec Schierenbeck, executive director of the Charter Revision Commission. 

Communities and councilmembers can’t weigh in on projects when nothing is being proposed, he argued, hoping it will spur more development.

The “fast track,” if enacted, would affect large swaths of the city. That could potentially include Council Speaker Adrienne Adams’ district where it overlaps with Queens Community Board 10.

Speaker Adams, who opposes the proposal, touted the Council’s ability to deliver on affordable housing, pointing to investments in her home borough of Queens. 

“Accountability to ensure every community contributes to the creation of housing is essential, but it does not require taking away communities’ power to negotiate increased affordability and investments from developers,” she told City Limits in a statement.

Who would be subject to the ‘fast track’ (hypothetically)?

The 12 community districts that have produced the least affordable housing in the past five years have just over a year to permit more, or risk being subject to the fast track.

While the Charter Commission did not name the 12 community boards currently lagging on affordable housing, City Limits followed their formula for affordable housing production to find out which districts would be subject to the rule if it went into effect today.

Two community boards in Manhattan, four in Queens, four in Brooklyn, and two in Staten Island would be in the bottom 12 by rate of new affordable construction compared to their existing housing stock. No Bronx districts would qualify currently.  

Many of those are outlying areas of the city that haven’t produced much housing at all, much less affordable housing—but some high density parts of the city would also land in the bottom 12 were the rule to take effect today.

A City Council analysis of the fast track proposal shared with City Limits mirrored these patterns.

Community districts don’t cleanly overlap with City Council districts, but the bottom 12 community boards in City Limits’ analysis cover portions of the city represented by Republican councilmembers on the South Shore of Staten Island, Southern Brooklyn and Northeast Queens.

The potentially affected areas also include much of the districts of Democrats Justin Brannan in Bay Ridge, Robert Holden in Maspeth, and Gale Brewer on the Upper West Side.

“You’re going to see a mix of neighborhoods that haven’t built affordable housing because they don’t want to and ones that haven’t built affordable housing because doing so is so expensive and complex,” said Jessica Katz, former chief housing officer under the Adams administration.

“Take Manhattan off the list,” Brewer told City Limits in a phone call. “We want affordable housing,” she added, noting that it’s harder to get affordable housing built in her already-dense district compared to others.

“Come up with a different formula,” she said.

Brannan and Holden did not respond to requests for comment before publication.

The disparity in housing production persists whether you look at community boards or Council districts. According to the New York Housing conference, in the last year the top seven City Council districts produced as much housing as the other 44 districts combined.

The Charter Commission report said the top 10 Council districts, on average, produced 751 affordable units a year while the bottom 10 produced just three.

Holden and Joann Ariola’s neighboring Queens districts produced just 245 affordable units between them from 2014-2024, among the 10 lowest totals among council districts in a separate NYHC analysis published earlier this year. Over the last decade, Bronx Council districts accounted for five of the 10 areas that saw the greatest number of new affordable units.

How would the ‘fast track’ work?

Under the charter change, the city would run the numbers in October 2026 and produce a report classifying community boards based on the number of affordable units produced in the past five years compared to the total number of units currently in the district.

From there, the bottom 12 communities would be subject to the “fast track” for any land use application that triggers the city’s mandatory inclusionary housing rules–either through a neighborhood rezoning or an individual application for a building of more than 10 units.

The local community board and borough president would then review the proposal simultaneously, as opposed to one after the other, as is the case currently. After those 60 days, the City Planning Commission would have 30 days to vote. If approved, it would advance the project to the City Council. 

“The Fast Track is narrowly targeted to address the need to build affordable housing in the few districts that build the least, while leaving the ordinary process of public review in place for the lion’s share of all changes,” wrote the Charter Commission in its report.

A City Council meeting in 2022. Councilmembers have condemned the “fast track” proposal. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

Why is it controversial?

The Charter Commission says that the measures are “modest” and seek to create new pathways to build housing in parts of the city where it is currently time consuming and expensive to do so.

But leaders in the City Council disagree, arguing that the changes would undermine their role in the land use process. Community board leaders, who make advisory votes on land use applications in their district, mostly opposed the changes in testimony before the commission.

Part of the resistance, sources say, might be due to the fact that the Charter Commission has Mayor Adams’ name attached. A joint statement from Council leadership Monday described the commission as a political power play, calling it a “self-serving narrative in support of expanded mayoral power.”

They pointed to the Council’s Fair Housing Framework—which will set production targets for neighborhoods, but stops short of mandating new development—and the passage of City of Yes as evidence of the Council’s motivation to do more on housing.

“There’s no question that we have to change the status quo in favor of building more housing. While I share some of the concerns about how the proposals might undermine our ability to shape outcomes in our own districts, I also believe that we have to take bold action to tackle the housing crisis. The old way isn’t working, and it’s time for something new,” said Keith Powers, whose Eastside Manhattan district could be partially subject to the “fast track” alongside fellow member Julie Menin from the Upper East Side.

A spokesperson for Powers emphasized that building housing is particularly difficult in his district, and said that projects currently in the pipeline might bump them out of the bottom tier by next year. Manhattan Board 6 in Stuyvesant Town and Turtle Bay was 13th lowest on affordable housing production, and Manhattan Community Board 8 on the Upper East side was fifth lowest, when City Limits ran its analysis.

“I think this is really ramming something down people’s throats,” said Brewer. She argued the way to get things done is to work with councilmembers and community boards, not shame them.

‘Appeals board’ also ruffles feathers

Separately, the commission has taken aim at the longstanding practice of “member deference” on land use issues. Under member deference, the Council only advances land use changes if the local councilmember signs off.

The third proposed ballot measure would create a new appeals board, made up of the mayor, council speaker, and representative borough president, which could reverse the Council’s decisions on qualifying affordable housing projects.

The commission argued in its report that councilmembers have bargained down the number of apartments (and affordable units) in potential developments as a result of their review power. An unknowable number of units, the report says, are never even proposed.

“When someone proposes an affordable housing development, the first thing they do is look up who the City Council member is, and if the City Council member is someone who will never say yes to an affordable housing development, they don’t do anything with that site at all,” said Schierenbeck.

“This is really creating an accountability mechanism, a backstop for bad faith actors,” said Annemarie Gray, executive director of the pro-housing group Open New York.

Councilmembers say they are just fighting for the best deal for their community, and pointed the blame at Mayor Adams.

A group of 28 councilmembers, from Democratic Socialists to Republican Joann Ariola, condemned the suite of charter proposals in a statement, saying “unlike this commission, we believe the input of communities, elected officials, and organized labor can make development projects better.”

A building under construction in Brooklyn in 2022. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

How can communities get off the hot seat?

A lot can change in a year. If the ballot measure passes, communities will still have 10 months before the City Council would officially designate the 12 community boards that produced the least affordable housing for their size.

The City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, which passed late last year, was designed to unlock development potential in areas of the city that were lagging behind on housing production. If some of that construction comes to fruition, the balance could shift.

City of Yes included several carveouts to facilitate its passage through the City Council. The Charter Commission’s packages require no such review—many councilmembers who voted against City of Yes, or, like Brannan, secured an exception to aid their district, are the same councilmembers who may be subject to fast-tracking.

Ariola, a Republican representing Queens, said her stance was not in opposition to affordable housing generally, but wanting to make sure new development is “smart” and not overburdening infrastructure in her district, arguments reminiscent of the debate over City of Yes.

Ariola and Holden both voted no on City of Yes last year.

Community boards could build their way out of the dog house. For example, permitting 90 new units of affordable housing in Ozone Park and Howard Beach, where just 12 new affordable units were built since July 2020, would bump Queens Community District 10 from the third-lowest to out of the bottom 12.

You can weigh in on November’s ballot

On Monday, the commission voted to advance a ballot measure creating the affordable housing fast track, alongside three other land use proposals.

In addition to the affordable housing fast track and the affordable housing review board, the charter changes would streamline the review period for affordable housing developments of a smaller size.

Others include the affordable housing appeals board that can override the City Council, simplified review for modest housing and infrastructure projects, and creating a digital city map.

Look out for those proposals on your ballot on election day, when voters will consider land use reforms as well as a proposal to move New York City’s mayoral elections to presidential election years.

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Patrick@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

Want to republish this story? Find City Limits’ reprint policy here.

The post The 12 Communities Where Mayor Adams’ Charter Commission Could ‘Fast Track’ Affordable Housing appeared first on City Limits.

By ELÉONORE HUGHES and DIARLEI RODRIGUES

PORCIUNCULA, Brazil (AP) — Brazilian José Natal da Silva often tends to his modest coffee plantation in the interior of Rio de Janeiro state in the middle of the night, sacrificing sleep to fend off pests that could inflict harm on his precious crops.

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But anxiety has troubled his shut-eye even more in recent weeks, following President Donald Trump’s announcement earlier this month of a 50% tariff on Brazilian imported goods, which experts expect to drive down the price of coffee in Brazil.

Da Silva sighed as he recounted his fears, sitting on the dry earth surrounded by his glossy green arabica coffee shrubs, in the small municipality of Porciuncula.

“We’re sad because we struggle so much. We spend years battling to get somewhere. And suddenly, everything starts falling apart, and we’re going to lose everything,” da Silva said. “How are we going to survive?”

Tariff linked to Bolsonaro trial

Trump’s tariff on Brazil is overtly political. In his public letter detailing the reasons for the hike, the U.S. president called the trial of his ally, former President Jair Bolsonaro, a “ witch hunt.” Bolsonaro is accused of masterminding a coup to overturn his 2022 election loss to left-leaning President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

The tariff has sparked ripples of fear in Brazil, particularly among sectors with deep ties to the American market such as beef, orange juice — and coffee. Minor coffee producers say the import tax will hit their margins and adds to the uncertainty already generated by an increasingly dry and unpredictable climate.

Brazil, the world’s largest coffee producer, exports around 85% of its production. The United States is the country’s top coffee buyer and represents around 16% of exports, according to Brazil’s coffee exporters council Cecafe.

The president of Cecafe’s deliberative council, Márcio Ferreira, told journalists last week that he thinks the U.S. will continue to import Brazilian coffee, even with the hefty tariff. “It’s obvious that neither the United States nor any other source can give up on Brazil, even if it’s tariffed,” he said.

Tariff could hurt competitiveness of Brazilian coffee in U.S.

But the tariff will likely decrease Brazilian coffee’s competitiveness in the U.S. and naturally reduce demand, said Leandro Gilio, a professor of global agribusiness at Insper business school in Sao Paulo.

“There’s no way we can quickly redirect our coffee production to other markets,” Gilio said. “This principally affects small producers, who have less financial power to make investments or support themselves in a period like this.”

Family farmers produce more than two-thirds of Brazilian coffee. They are a majority in Rio state’s northwestern region, where most of the state’s coffee production lies.

Coffee farming is the primary economic activity in these municipalities. In Porciuncula, which neighbors Brazil’s largest coffee-producing state Minas Gerais, gentle mountains are layered with symmetrical lines of coffee shrubs.

Da Silva, who wore a straw hat for protection from the sun and a crucifix around his neck, owns around 40,000 coffee trees. He started working in the fields when he was 12.

Besides coffee, he grows cassava, squash, bananas, oranges and lemons and has a few chickens that provide fresh eggs. “We have them because of the fear of not being able to eat. We wouldn’t manage if everything were bought, because the profit is very low,” he said.

Last year, drought — made more likely by human-caused climate change — devastated large swathes of da Silva’s production. The reduction in supply pushed coffee prices up, but only after many small-scale farmers had already sold all their crops.

Since peaking in February, prices of arabica have fallen, dropping 33% by July, according to the University of Sao Paulo’s Center for Advanced Studies in Applied Economics, which provides renowned commodity price reports.

“When you make an investment, counting on a certain price for coffee, and then when you go to sell it the price is 20-30% less than you calculated, it breaks the producers,” said Paulo Vitor Menezes Freitas, 31, who also owns a modest plantation of around 35,000 coffee trees in the nearby municipality of Varre-Sai.

The demands of coffee farming

Life out in the fields is tough, according to Menezes Freitas.

During harvest season, he sometimes gets up at 3 a.m. to turn on a coffee drier, going to bed as late as midnight. The rest of the year is less intense, but still, there are few to no breaks because there’s always work to do, he said.

Menezes Freitas, who is expecting his first child in October, said the tariff’s announcement increased his fears for the future.

“It’s scary. It feels like you’re on shaky ground. If things get worse, what will we do? People will start pulling out their coffee and finding other ways to survive because they won’t have the means to continue,” he said.

In addition to slashing the value of his coffee beans, Menezes Freitas said the tariff will impact machinery and aluminum — goods that producers like him use every day.

“We hope this calms down. Hopefully, they’ll come to their senses and remove that tariff. I think it would be better for both the United States and Brazil,” he said.