‘Crisis even bigger than Covid’: American business owners are barely getting by

Jeff Vojta can’t catch a break. The CEO of Dilworth Coffee in Raleigh, North Carolina, contended with a miserable Brazilian coffee crop in 2024 that vaulted coffee futures to record highs. The next year, President Donald Trump’s global tariffs raised coffee prices even higher. Then, this year, the Iran war started. And a Super El Niño. “Between shipping disruptions, the lack of containers, high costs because of what’s going on in the Red Sea and higher fertilizer costs, we have this period of disruption that we’ve never encountered before,” said Vojta, who founded the national coffee distributor more than three decades ago. “There’s just so much uncertainty.” Around the country, American business owners across myriad industries say they’re in a similar boat.