Consumers are likely to pay more for lumber, coffee, chocolate, perhaps sugar _ anything that we import through the ports in the affected region will face higher prices.

Consumers will see higher prices on coffee beverages and even chocolate if the raw supplies get backed up at the ports. In agricultural products, prices of cereals and breads could decline. If we can't export the wheat and grain, then the excess supply will have to be consumed domestically, pushing down prices.

The Port of New Orleans alone imports 250,000 tons of coffee every year.

Coffee and chocolate—the inventor of mocha should be sainted.

Just the other day, I was in my neighborhood Starbucks, waiting for the post office to open. I was enjoying a chocolatey cafe mocha when it occurred to me that to drink a mocha is to gulp down the entire history of the New World. From the Spanish exportation of Aztec cacao, and the Dutch invention of the chemical process for making cocoa, on down to the capitalist empire of Hershey, PA, and the lifestyle marketing of Seattle's Starbucks, the modern mocha is a bittersweet concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention, and consumerism served with whipped cream on top.

Coffee and chocolate are certainly wonderful, but they must forever carry tea’s silken train, ever the bridesmaids and never the bride.