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Chocolate’s reign over Halloween is under threat from inflation, tariffs and high cocoa prices
A customer shops for Halloween candy at a Walmart Supercenter on October 16, 2024 in Austin, Texas.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images
The scariest thing haunting Halloween this year isn’t a ghost, goblin or ghoul — it’s the price of chocolate.
From Snickers to Reese’s to Twix, one of America’s favorite indulgences is getting more expensive, as tariffs, inflation and high cocoa prices squeeze profit margins and customers’ pocketbooks, possibly leading to fewer chocolate bars landing in trick-or-treat buckets this year.
Chocolate prices have surged nearly 30% since last Halloween and almost 78% in the past five years, according to data from research firm Circana and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. A 100-piece variety bag of candy now costs $16.39, up from $7.20 in 2020, FinanceBuzz found.
That spike is showing up on store shelves. Variety packs from Hershey — maker of Reese’s, KitKats and Heath bars — are up about 22%, while Mars, the company behind M&M’s and Milky Way, raised prices about 12%, according to the Century Foundation, a progressive, independent think tank, and the Groundwork Collaborative.
“The season did get off to a slow start,” Hershey CEO Kirk Tanner told investors on an earnings call Thursday, warning that holiday sales could be softer this year.
About 4 in 5 Americans buy candy for the Halloween holiday, according to YouGov. This time of year makes up about 18% of annual U.S. confectionery sales — second only to Christmas, according to the National Confectioners Association.
But chocolate’s dominance is slipping. Circana found it made up 52% of Halloween candy sales last year, compared with 44% this year, as shoppers shift toward cheaper, trendier sweets.
“Macroeconomic headwinds” are among the culprits, said Sally Wyatt, who works for Circana analyzing global consumer packaged goods and as a food-service industry advisor. “It’s the compounded impact on top of the fact that we’ve outpaced wage growth. So consumers have started to … [make] very specific choices on discretionary items.”
Sector-wide, candy prices are outpacing the national inflation rate, marking a roughly 10% increase compared with last year, according to the Century Foundation. Still, the National Retail Federation said 2025 is expected to be a record year for candy sales in the U.S., with about $3.9 billion spent on Halloween candy alone.
“Even as consumers face higher prices for food, they continue to leave room in their budgets for chocolate and candy, meaning that the category is strong, vibrant and growing,” Carly Schildhaus, a spokesperson for the National Confectioners Association, told CNBC.
Much of the chocolate filling U.S. shelves this fall was made from cocoa beans purchased at record prices last December, when futures peaked above $12,000 per ton, experts said. Prices have since cooled to around $6,000, but that’s still more than double the pre-pandemic average.
A cocktail of rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, drought and crop disease for the past three years has devastated harvests in West Africa, which produces roughly 70% of the world’s cocoa. The result: the largest global cocoa deficit in 60 years, with supply falling half a million tons short of demand.
Prices could stabilize, but not decrease, by next year as crop yields have increased, said David Branch, a sector manager at Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute.
“It’s not just the cost of manufacturing cocoa and other ingredients,” Branch told CNBC. “It’s also a combination of labor, transportation, fuel, overhead [and] all of those factors, and, given the inflationary rate we’ve been in, those came up and haven’t really come down.”
Hershey said Thursday that tariff expenses will cost the company $160 million to $170 million this year. In July, it also announced a “low double-digit” price hike, though executives said those increases weren’t tied to tariffs or Halloween pricing.
Chocolate makers have lobbied the Trump administration for tariff exemptions on cocoa and other agricultural imports, arguing they have little ability to source those ingredients domestically.
Sweet variety
As chocolate becomes more expensive, fruity, sour and chewy candies have gotten more popular. More than half of shoppers said they planned to prioritize gummy candies for Halloween this year, NielsenIQ found.
On average, the price per pound of chocolate rose nearly 14% in the 12 weeks ending Oct. 5, while sales volumes fell 6%, Circana data show. Non-chocolate Halloween candy such as Jolly Ranchers and Skittles saw sales climb 8.3% in that same period.
Younger adults, especially Gen Z, are also fueling growth in non-chocolate categories — gravitating toward gummies, freeze-dried sweets and TikTok-friendly flavor mashups.
“It’s that experiential [aspect] because you can have it [non-chocolate items] with chewy, with sweet flavors, with hot and sweet, spicy flavors,” Wyatt told CNBC. “Some candies you get this big explosion in your mouth of flavors. We’ve seen it popular with different cohorts.”
Chocolate makers are responding in kind. Hershey has expanded its gummy lineup, including a partnership with Shaquille O’Neal, and rolled out ghost-shaped Twizzlers and mismatched “Trickies” Jolly Rancher gummies.
Mondelez International, maker of Cadbury and Toblerone, said it’s also prioritizing gummies in the U.S. market. CEO Dirk Van de Put said on an earnings call Tuesday, however, that the U.S. market in particular “is slower than we’ve seen in quite a while” and the company’s promotional strategy earlier this year “was not giving us the volume effect that we were hoping for.”
Manufacturers are also experimenting with smaller bars, new fillings and cocoa-free options such as crème or nut-based confections to offset rising ingredient costs, Branch said.
“Companies have got to be very aware of if they can keep their prices in line. They can’t just keep increasing their prices and expect sales to continue to go up,” Branch said. “But customers have not lost their appetite for chocolate. It’s going to remain an indulgence that people will always have and can’t really do without.”
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Budget 2026: FM Nirmala Sitharaman gives a strong push to manufacturing, infrastructure and job creation, while proposing a simpler tax and customs system.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presents the Union Budget 2026-27.
Budget 2026 Takeaways: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday presented the Union Budget 2026-27, giving a strong push to manufacturing, infrastructure and job creation, proposing a simpler tax and customs regime, and hailing the government’s modernisation drive as a “reforms express”.
The Budget 2026 is anchored around three ‘kartavyas’ — driving growth by enhancing productivity and competitiveness, building people’s capacity, and ensuring inclusive development under the vision of Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikaas.
In her ninth consecutive Budget in Parliament, Sitharaman laid out a multi-pronged strategy to sustain growth amid global uncertainty, including expanding domestic electronics and semiconductor capabilities, de-risking infrastructure projects, skilling India’s youth for emerging technologies, and easing compliance for taxpayers and importers.
Here are the key takeaways from Budget 2026 across manufacturing, infrastructure, skills, AI, taxation and customs duty.
Manufacturing Gets A Boost
Budget 2026 put a special emphasis on the manufacturing landscape in India. The outlay for electronics components manufacturing was raised sharply to Rs 40,000 crore, while new schemes for rare earth magnets, chemical parks, container manufacturing and capital goods seek to reduce import dependency, and strengthen domestic supply chains. Textiles got an integrated, employment-oriented package covering fibres, clusters, skilling and sustainability.
Infrastructure-Led Growth
Infrastructure got a boost with a higher capex allocation and initiatives like a risk guarantee fund to de-risk projects for private developers, new dedicated freight corridors and national waterways, dedicated REITs (real estate investment trusts) for recycling of significant real estate assets of central public sector enterprises (CPSEs), and a seaplane VGF (viability gap funding) scheme.
The Centre’s capital expenditure (capex) target has been increased to Rs 12.2 lakh crore for FY27, up from Rs 11.2 lakh crore earmarked for the current financial year. Moreover, maintaining the fiscal discipline, Sitharaman said the government expects the fiscal deficit to be at 4.3 per cent of the GDP in 2026-27, lower than 4.4 per cent projected for the current financial year.
Tier-II and Tier-III cities were placed at the centre of urban growth via City Economic Regions, backed by reform-linked funding.
“We shall continue to focus on developing infrastructure in cities with over 5 lakh population (Tier II and Tier III), which have expanded to become growth centres,” Sitharaman said in her Budget Speech.
Greater Emphasis On Skilling
The Budget placed renewed emphasis on the services economy as a jobs engine. A high-powered Education-to-Employment and Enterprise Committee will realign skilling with market needs, including the impact of emerging technologies.
Content creation and creative industries get a boost through AVGC labs in schools and colleges, support for animation, gaming and comics, and new institutional capacity for design and hospitality. Tourism-linked skilling, from guides to digital heritage documentation, signals a clear intent to convert culture and content into employment and exports.
“I propose to support the Indian Institute of Creative Technologies, Mumbai in setting up AVGC Content Creator Labs in 15,000 secondary schools and 500 colleges,” FM Sitharaman said. AVGC stands for animation, visual effects, gaming and comics.
AI & Semiconductors Push
Artificial intelligence (AI) was positioned as a cross-sector force multiplier rather than a standalone theme. The Budget provided a push to artificial intelligence (AI) by promoting adoption with governance, agriculture, education and skilling, including proposals for AI-enabled advisory tools for farmers and AI integration in education curricula.
On hardware, the semiconductor strategy expanded decisively under ISM 2.0 (India Semiconductor Mission 2.0), with focus on domestic equipment manufacturing, materials, research centres and workforce development, signalling a long-term commitment to building a resilient chip ecosystem in India.
Taxation, ITR, TDS, TCS
A major structural reform comes with the Income Tax Act, 2025, effective April 1, 2026, containing simpler rules and redesigned forms.
Budget 2026 provided compliance relief for individuals, including extended timelines for revising returns to March 31 from December 31 earlier, staggered ITR due dates, and easier filing of Form 15G/15H through depositories.
Individuals with ITR-1 and ITR-2 returns will continue to file till July 31, and non-audit business cases or trusts are proposed to be allowed time till August 31, according to the Budget Speech 2026-27.
“I propose to extend time available for revising returns from 31st December to up to 31st March with the payment of a nominal fee. I also propose to stagger the timeline for filing of tax returns. Individuals with ITR 1 and ITR 2 returns will continue to file till 31st July and non-audit business cases or trusts are proposed to be allowed time till 31st August,” Sitharaman said.
TDS (Tax deducted at source) rules were clarified for manpower services, while a rule-based system for lower or nil TDS certificates is proposed. TCS rates were cut to 2% for overseas tour packages, education and medical expenses under liberalised remittance scheme (LRS). Litigation is targeted through integrated assessment and penalty orders, lower pre-deposit requirements, and wider immunity provisions.
TDS on the sale of immovable property by a non-resident will be deducted and deposited through resident buyer’s PAN (Permanent Account Number)-based challan instead of requiring TAN (Tax Deduction and Collection Account Number), Sitharaman said.
Customs Duty Tweaks
Customs duty rationalisation continued with a clear focus on domestic manufacturing, energy transition and ease of living. Exemptions have been extended or introduced for capital goods used in lithium-ion batteries, critical minerals processing, nuclear power projects and aircraft manufacturing.
Personal imports will become cheaper with a reduction in duty on goods for personal use from 20% to 10%. Seventeen cancer drugs and additional rare-disease treatments were exempted from customs duty. Process reforms aimed at trust-based, tech-driven clearances, faster cargo movement and lower compliance costs, especially for exporters and MSMEs (micro, small, medium and enterprises).
STT On F&O Hiked
The Budget increased securities transaction tax (STT) on futures trading from 0.02% to 0.05% and on options trading from 0.10% to 0.15%, a move that upset the capital markets with the BSE Sensex crashing more than 2,300 points from the day’s high and the NSE Nifty dropping to 24,571.75.
Securities Transaction Tax (STT) is a direct tax imposed on the buying and selling of securities in India.
Commenting on the Budget, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “The Union Budget reflects the aspirations of 140 crore Indians. It strengthens the reform journey and charts a clear roadmap for Viksit Bharat.”
February 01, 2026, 14:43 IST
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