In any trade war, there are going to be casualties. And in this case: Potentially delicious, intoxicating casualties.
On Wednesday, the Trump administration announced its latest round of economic attacks on Canada, the former U.S. ally for the better part of a century, as part of Trump’s ongoing dick measuring contest trade war with the nation and its leader, Prime Minister Mark Carney. Among the wide array of specific Canadian goods and products where imports will be banned are various types of dairy goods and motorbikes, but one of the categories in particular is guaranteed to capture the popular imagination: An almost total ban on Canadian booze. This proclamation is laid out in full in last night’s executive order from the desk of Trump. The U.S. President’s rationale is that Canada has been “discriminating” against the United States by not importing some of our products; now we’ll do the same to theirs.
And when it comes to the category of alcohol, Trump isn’t wrong that American exports of our own booze to Canada have fallen precipitously since the president began threatening widespread tariffs on the nation (and our other allies) last year. In fact, it’s been deeply painful for fields like the U.S. spirits industry, which saw exports to Canada fall more than 70% in the period between March-December of 2025, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, and the American wine industry, which declined in shipments to Canada by almost 80% in the course of just one year. And considering the dire straits that the American wine industry was already facing, losing one of its biggest export markets practically overnight was the kind of insult to injury that has likely already contributed to plenty of winery closures. The nation of Canada never actually banned American booze, though–rather, some of the provincial governments removed American brands from store shelves, and in other places, “buy Canadian instead” boycotts proved extremely successful.
Canada is figuring out what to do with its stockpiles of US alcohol. I suggest they save it, and give it away for free, for the global party coming up soon.
www.businessinsider.com/canada-us-al…— Piyush Mittal (@piyushmittal.bsky.social) 11:44 PM · Dec 12, 2025
The Trump admin, on the other hand, will apply no such nuance. The new import restrictions on Canadian alcohol laid out in Trump’s executive order aim to put extreme economic pain on Canadian producers of beer, wine and distilled spirits that depend on the U.S. market as their main export region. Essentially, the blanket import ban will replace the ludicrous 50% tariff those products were already facing to reach U.S. shelves, and will instead remove them completely at the federal level.
For U.S. consumers, this means that a lot of Canadian alcohol brands could simply vanish from store shelves in short order, after the new import restrictions take effect on Sept. 29, 2026. We’re talking about major brands here that simply disappear, ranging from iconic Canadian whiskeys such as Crown Royal, Canadian Club or Lot No. 40, to Canadian beer brands like Molson, Labatt or Moosehead. Technically speaking, a few products will be immune to the blanket import ban because they’re manufactured in Canada but bottled in the United States, such as the Canadian blended whisky Black Velvet, which is owned by Kentucky’s Heaven Hill. But many of the country’s best-known brands produced at facilities such as the Hiram Walker distillery in Windsor, the largest in terms of production on the entire continent, will now suddenly have no U.S. export market. This would be a massive deal for specific brands such as Crown Royal, and also a massive deal to U.S. drinkers given that the Crown Royal brand usually sits at #2 or #3 in overall U.S. sales every year, dueling with the likes of Jack Daniel’s and Jim Beam.
Trump escalates trade war with Canada, moving to ban the import of some autos, dairy and alcohol www.nbcnews.com/business/eco…
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur.bsky.social) 8:20 PM · Sep 8, 2026
I can only imagine that American barflies and whiskey fans are not going to take that news lying down. Whereas products remaining on the shelf but creeping up in price–such as car parts or toilet paper, now surging thanks to tariffs on Canada–is the sort of thing that one might be expected to radically accept, an entire category of well-known products actively disappearing from store shelves, bars and restaurants is another thing entirely. Boomers who have been drinking Crown Royal for decades, and hail from an era when brand loyalty actually existed? This is the kind of thing they’ll no doubt be super reasonable and not at all emotional about when they realize what is happening. I certainly can’t wait for Trump and Fox News to convince them that Joe Biden somehow banned their favorite whiskey via elaborate economic time travel.
All the Canadian alcohol products the Trump admin says it will ban starting 9/29/26: www.whitehouse.gov/presidential…
— Dave Infante (@dinfontay.com) 8:04 PM · Sep 8, 2026
Actual alcohol industry professionals, meanwhile, naturally want to see this entire trade war with Canada come to a close as quickly as it possibly can, even though it will probably take not just years but maybe decades to rebuild the cultural cachet of American brands abroad. The suits who speak for big industry groups are carefully phrasing their criticisms of said trade war to avoid pissing off the administration, simultaneously thanking Trump and begging him to stop being an economic psychopath engaged in a pointless contest of wills with a former ally. Or as Chris Swonger, president and CEO of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States put it: “We appreciate President Trump’s recognition of the significant harm these sales bans have caused U.S. distillers and urge leaders on both sides of the border to reach a negotiated solution that restores U.S. spirits to retail shelves throughout Canada and returns the spirits sector to a permanent zero-for-zero tariff framework.” Or in real person lingo, “Please leave our industry alone; I’m begging you.”
All of those outcomes hinge on the U.S. and Canada coming back to the bargaining table, and there appears to be no suggestion this is happening any time soon. No new talks have been scheduled since the collapse of negotiations ignited the renewed trade war at the end of August, and with Prime Minister Mark Carney’s public approval rating an almost perfect inverse of Trump’s at 70% or higher, he has little immediate motivation to restart talks with the U.S. when the majority of his country seemingly agrees with him that Canada should stand up for its rights, even at the expense of its own economy. The two sides are both left posturing and trying to pretend that the trade war won’t be putting their workers or entire companies out of business.
It’s a sad state of affairs for Canadian alcohol regardless, a sector that kept America’s thirst slaked during Prohibition and contributed in the process to the building of several of North America’s biggest family fortunes. What will be left of the industry, though, after close contact with Donald Trump?
