The ban on importing green coffee into Hawaii and Puerto Rico exists to keep out two pests that are already there

Two pests are named in the regulation. Both are already in Hawaii and both are already in Puerto Rico.

The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service proposed on Tuesday to take their names out. Section 319.73-2(a) of the plant import regulations prohibits bringing unroasted coffee, coffee leaves and empty coffee sacks into Hawaii or Puerto Rico, and it states its reason as preventing the introduction and spread of the coffee berry borer and coffee leaf rust. The proposal would replace that with a prohibition aimed at quarantine pests generally, a term the same rule would define as a pest of potential economic importance to the area endangered by it and not yet present there, or present but not widely distributed and under official control. The agency gives its own reason in one sentence: the regulations were written when neither pest was present in Hawaii or Puerto Rico, and that is no longer the case.

The part that changes how the rule moves

The second half of the proposal is procedural, and it matters more.

Any exception to the blanket prohibition currently has to be made by rulemaking. Subpart O has never once been amended in response to a request, which is the agency's own statement of the record rather than a characterisation of it. The proposal would add a section allowing imports to be authorised by notice instead: the agency analyses the pest risk from a named foreign region, publishes that analysis for at least 60 days of comment, and then announces its decision in a second notice. The same route runs in reverse, so conditions can be tightened, or dropped, without a new rule. What is authorised and on what terms would sit in the department's import requirements database rather than in the Code of Federal Regulations.

Kona

The economic analysis attached to the proposal carries a number that has nothing to do with pests.

A blend sold with a Hawaii geographic reference must contain at least 10 percent Hawaii-grown beans today. Under a new state standard, that minimum becomes 51 percent after 1 July 2027. The analysis says the proposal grants no market access by itself and would have no direct effect on the quantity of green beans arriving, while noting that lower import friction adds value to the foreign beans that go into blends, and that fully Hawaii-grown products are limited by how little Hawaii and Kona actually grow.

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