Fifteen months into the current tariff cycle, one thing is clear for organic and botanical importers: the volatility isn’t a phase to wait out. It’s the new operating environment.
The story started in March 2025, weeks ahead of the administration’s April 2 “reciprocal tariff” rollout, when the Organic Trade Association warned that the incoming plan would collide directly with an organic supply chain built on trade with the countries at the top of the deficit list. Mexico ($2.3 billion) and Canada ($1.8 billion) were the largest sources of US organic imports at the time, with India flagged separately as a major supplier of organic soy and other ingredients used across processed foods, according to the Organic Trade Association. The warning held up.
The August overhaul
By August 2025, the Natural Products Association was tracking what it called a historic tariff overhaul: more than 70 countries hit with rates of 10 to 50 percent, an average US tariff rate of 18.3 percent, the highest since 1934, and the elimination of the $800 de minimis exemption that had previously let smaller shipments clear duty-free, effective August 29, 2025, per NPA’s tariff tracker.
For herb and spice buyers, the country-by-country breakdown mattered more than the headline figure. Effective August 7, 2025, India sat at 25 percent, with threats of further increases tied to its purchases of Russian oil. China was at 30 percent. The European Union carried a 15 percent floor. Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand landed in the 19 to 20 percent range, NPA reported.
Because India supplies turmeric, ashwagandha, boswellia and guduchi, and China supplies ginseng, ginkgo and green tea extracts, botanical formulators took cost increases across nearly their entire raw-material list in a single stretch. There was no single ingredient to hedge around. The exposure was structural.
Partial relief, unevenly distributed
Some relief followed, but it wasn’t uniform. In September 2025, an executive order opened a pathway to zero percent reciprocal rates for agricultural products that cannot be grown, mined, or produced in sufficient domestic quantities, according to NPA.
Then, in mid-November 2025, the White House expanded its exemption annex further. An executive order issued November 14, 2025 added cinnamon, ginger and turmeric to the full exemption list, alongside spices, coffee and tea more broadly, applied retroactively to goods entered on or after November 13, 2025, per NutraIngredients-USA. The American Herbal Products Association’s Robert Marriott credited industry advocacy for the win.
Psyllium and boswellia didn’t get the same treatment. Both landed in a narrower category, Potential Tariff Adjustments for Aligned Partners, where exemption depended on sourcing from a country with an existing US trade agreement. India, the dominant source of psyllium husk, had no such deal in place, so India-origin psyllium didn’t qualify, NutraIngredients-USA reported. NPA’s Daniel Fabricant said the association would keep pressing the issue if buyers began shifting origin countries.
The stakes are not trivial. Psyllium is the top-selling herbal supplement in the mainstream channel and ranks tenth in the Natural channel, with combined sales across both worth more than $300 million, according to the Herb Market Report cited by NutraIngredients-USA.
The Supreme Court reshuffles the deck again
Then the legal foundation moved. In February 2026, the US Supreme Court struck down the broad tariffs the administration had imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the same statute behind the reciprocal tariff regime and its botanical carve-outs, according to trade publication Majestic Spice.
The relief didn’t last long. The administration almost immediately introduced a new 15 percent global tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. The practical question for importers, according to Majestic Spice, is no longer whether tariffs were struck down, but whether specific products remain covered under the replacement structure: many tariffs stayed in effect despite the ruling.
Refund claims tied to duties already paid under the invalidated IEEPA authority remain unresolved. The Court of International Trade ordered on March 4, 2026 that duties on unliquidated entries be refunded at the time of liquidation, but implementation was still pending system and processing fixes as of that ruling, per NPA. For finance teams that paid IEEPA-era duties between mid-2025 and early 2026, that money may still be recoverable, but it isn’t automatic.
Geopolitics, not just agronomy
Zoom out and the tariff campaign is doing double duty as trade strategy. Researchers at the Peterson Institute for International Economics tracked nine Agreements on Reciprocal Trade signed by the administration as of May 22, 2026, part of a broader push to pull supply chains away from China, according to PIIE’s analysis. The effect has been measurable: China’s share of US goods imports fell from 22 percent before the 2018-19 trade war to 9 percent by the end of 2025, PIIE found.
The EU’s experience is instructive. A framework agreement reached July 27, 2025 secured the bloc a 15 percent tariff rate, down from a threatened 30 percent, in exchange for a commitment to purchase $750 billion in US energy products, per NPA. Countries willing to sign framework agreements are getting preferential treatment over those that haven’t, which means botanical sourcing decisions are now shaped as much by which governments strike deals as by where a plant grows best.
What buyers should do now
The US imports more than 95 percent of the spices it consumes, with India accounting for roughly 25 to 30 percent of global spice exports, Vietnam leading in black pepper, Indonesia a major nutmeg and clove supplier, and China a key exporter of garlic and dehydrated ingredients, according to Majestic Spice. There is no domestic substitute waiting in the wings for any of this.
Spice and coffee buyers secured durable relief on a short list: cinnamon, ginger, turmeric and tea. But extract-heavy botanicals sourced from India and China, including ashwagandha, boswellia, ginseng and ginkgo, remain exposed to base-rate tariffs stacked on top of the new 15 percent global floor.
- Build tariff-adjustment clauses into supply contracts rather than absorbing rate changes after the fact.
- Treat origin diversification as a cost-management tool, not a contingency plan.
- Track refund eligibility on any IEEPA-era duties paid between mid-2025 and early 2026. That window may still yield recoverable money once CBP’s systems catch up.
- Watch India’s trade-agreement status closely. If it signs a deal with the US, psyllium and boswellia could move into the fuller exemption category.
For the organic and botanical trade, the tariff bill is no longer a temporary line item. It has become part of the fixed cost of doing business, and nothing in the current legal or geopolitical trajectory suggests it’s getting smaller.