Breakfast has always been my favorite meal. It has several origins: My Scottish and English forebears, for whom a substantial first-meal-of-the-day was an article of faith; my maternal grandmother preparing a bounteous spread for farm hands at 5.30 a.m. in her farm kitchen; and a lifetime of travel and, with it, hotel breakfasts eaten all over the world.

Now, in retirement, I see the wisdom of John Gunther, the American journalist and writer, who famously said: “All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast.” Once you get in the habit, it has a way of drawing you in. The prospect of a second pot of tea takes the chill out of a cold winter morning like nothing else.

I have memories of some especially memorable breakfasts. There was one in The River Restaurant of London’s swank Savoy Hotel. And another in the San Marco Room of Denver’s Brown Palace Hotel one very cold January day during the city’s famous Stock Show. The dining room was filled with cowboy hats and, a few yards away in the lobby, the Grand Champion Bull from that year’s Stock Show was grazing in a pen.

My favorite breakfast?

That’s an easy one.

After a good night’s sleep on Santa Fe’s westbound Super Chief train, I entered the dining car where breakfast was in progress. There, I entered that surreal world of Irish linen tablecloths, heavy, buffed silverware and a menu running to two large pages. Having your tea and eggs at 90 miles an hour as the train bounded across Kansas? How can you possibly beat that?

As good as breakfast food is, though, nothing makes the eggs, toast and marmalade taste better than a pot of strong black tea and the morning’s newspaper beside them.

And that’s my point in writing this.

For all I know, President Trump is a “coffee guy.” Or, he may not know much of the world’s tea comes from China. During his first administration, we tea drinkers got a nasty shock when the cost of our beloved drink went up 20% almost overnight with the first round of tariffs. Now, with a further 10% tariff hanging in the balance, things could get really dicey.

On top of that, there’s now a very real threat of a 25% tariff on imported newsprint, the

essential element in printing a newspaper. I’m reliably informed that up to 75% of the newsprint used in U.S. newspapers comes from Canada. In April 2018, when the first Trump tariffs took effect, newsprint increased in price by more than 30%. The result was the death of hundreds of newspapers — small and not so small — across the country.

A new round of tariffs on newsprint will undoubtedly cause many good publishers to strongly consider reducing the frequency of their papers. Recently, three esteemed newspapers in Iowa did just that: The Storm Lake Times-Pilot, Cedar Rapids Gazette and Dubuque Telegraph-Herald. The Gazette and Telegraph will ramp down from seven-day-a-week schedules to three; the Pulitzer-prize-winning Times-Pilot will go from publishing two days per week to one.

With it all, comes yet another round of pink slips for everybody from publishers, editors, writers and photographers to pressmen, truck drivers and postal clerks, all of whom will have less work when the presses don’t roll as often.

Readers, of course, will have less and less timely local news.

Truth be told, I’m uncomfortable appearing on the editorial page at all. My usual “beat” is City Hall, where I don’t have the luxury of an opinion. But the reality is I must now face the prospect of breakfast with less tea and fewer newspapers.

Hardly worth getting up for.

Robert E. Oliver is an Iowa Newspaper Association award-winning freelance writer who publishes frequently in the Daily Freeman-Journal.