On Valentine’s Day, millions of Americans shower their sweeties with chocolates and other sugary treats. But this year, lovers and romantics may feel a little heartbroken when they reach the checkout counter.

The reason isn’t cupid’s errant bow, but rather sour government policies such as tariffs and subsidies. President Donald Trump’s tariffs and Washington’s long-running sugar program have left a bitter taste, with chocolate prices being pushed higher and confectionary products costing an arm and a leg. The Trump administration and lawmakers should show the American people some love and end these cold-hearted policies.

A slew of tariffs put into place over the past year have been increasingly difficult for families and businesses to swallow. Cocoa (mostly) doesn’t grow in the United States, meaning chocolate makers rely heavily on imports. Under the Trump administration’s trade policies, many imported goods have been hit with broad-based tariffs, including cocoa and chocolate products. In 2025, the administration imposed a 10% baseline tariff on most imports, with higher “reciprocal” rates on certain countries and products, including processed cocoa from Europe. Despite some much-needed rollbacks on reciprocal tariffs, continued “baseline” rates are anything but sweet and have proven difficult for chocolatiers and their consumers to stomach.

Cocoa prices were already soaring due to poor harvests in West Africa, and tariffs only made matters worse. Reuters reported that cocoa and chocolate markets were “rattled” by the new trade barriers, with manufacturers facing sharply higher costs just to secure basic inputs. In an interview with Forbes contributor Lilian Raji, Dan Abel, chief chocolate officer of the three-centuries-old chocolatier Bissinger’s Handcrafted Chocolates, noted that cocoa procurement in 2026 is already “costing us over a million dollars more than last year.” According to Lauren Martin, director of product development at San-Francisco-based Dandelion Chocolate, “We don’t grow cocoa beans in the U.S. except a little in Hawaii. Most cocoa beans we’re getting from other places, and the tariffs on those countries have increased significantly. It’s not something we can adjust quickly and change to a different country, because we have these very long-standing relationships with people we’ve been working with forever.”

In other words, tariffs do nothing to protect American chocolatiers or consumers. They only succeed in emptying wallets and breaking hearts on Valentine’s Day.

Unfortunately, the misery doesn’t end there. The federal government’s sugar program, a New Deal-era system designed to protect domestic sugar producers, has also swelled the ranks of the Lonely-Hearts Club. Through a combination of import quotas, tariffs, and price supports, the federal government tightly restricts the supply of sugar in the U.S. market. The result is predictable: Americans pay far more for sugar than consumers elsewhere.

According to a 2023 analysis by the Government Accountability Office, U.S. sugar prices are often significantly higher than the world price because of the sugar program; the “annual cost to the economy [is] around $1 billion per year.” That may be good news for sugar growers, but it’s bad news for candymakers, bakers, and anyone who has ever bought a gift on Valentine’s Day.

To make matters even worse, recent changes under the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) made the program more generous to sugar producers (and less generous to everyone else), strengthening price supports and continuing tight supply controls. American Enterprise Institute fellow Vincent Smith, who has long kept close watch on the sugar program, notes that “intervention or support prices, called loan rates, will be raised to 27 cents and 34 cents per pound, respectively [under OBBB] — substantial changes that are likely to lead to further and larger gaps between domestic and world market sugar prices. They are also likely to increase the frequency and size of federal spending on price-support purchases for U.S. sugar output.”

Taxpayer and consumer watchdog groups on both sides of the political aisle — including the Taxpayers Protection Alliance — have long warned that the sugar program is little more than a hidden tax on consumers. It raises food prices, penalizes manufacturers both in and out of the country, and hurts small confectioners that lack the scale to absorb higher ingredient costs. Yet this sour policy continues. 

Tariffs and the U.S. sugar program continue to make Valentine’s Day far more expensive than it needs to be. Policymakers can spread the love by ending this baker’s boondoggle for good.

Ross Marchand is the executive director of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.