Recent Trade War Articles

A Trade War Poured Neat: How the U.S.-Canada Alcohol Standoff Is Reshaping the Spirits Industry The trade relationship between the United States and Canada has weathered plenty of storms over the decades, but few fights have landed as personally — or as commercially — as the one now playing out acro

Bourbon in the Crosshairs: How Trade Wars Have Become American Whiskey's Biggest Recurring Nightmare Every few years, the conversation around American whiskey shifts from mash bills and barrel entry proofs to something far more uncomfortable: tariffs. Retaliatory duties, provincial bans, escalatin

Alberta Craft Whisky Just Got Its Biggest Stage Yet — And the Timing Could Not Be More Charged Walk into one of Alberta's Costco liquor stores this fall and you'll find something that wouldn't have been there a year ago: a bottle of small-batch, locally distilled whisky sitting right alongside the

A 75th Birthday Party With a Dark Cloud Overhead: Black Velvet Whisky and the Canada-U.S. Trade War There are not many ways to celebrate a 75th anniversary in the whisky business that feel genuinely earned. Decades of grain, water, oak, and patience stack up behind every milestone, and the Lethbri

Crown Royal's Narrow Escape: How North America's Best-Selling Canadian Whisky Is Sidestepping Trump's Import Ban The escalating trade war between Washington and Ottawa has finally reached the point that many in the spirits industry feared but few believed would actually arrive: a full, executive-o

Both Sides of the Border Are Bleeding: How the U.S.-Canada Alcohol Trade War Became Everybody's Problem When Canadian liquor store workers began physically pulling bottles of Kentucky bourbon, Tennessee whiskey, and American wine from government-run shelves in the spring of 2025, it made for strik

American Whiskey Is Caught in the Crossfire of a Collapsing U.S.-Canada Trade War For the better part of two years, the American whiskey industry has watched its most important northern export market evaporate one government liquor store shelf at a time. Now, with 50% tariffs officially in force a

Canadian Whisky Is Losing the American Market — And a Trade War Is Only Part of the Story The numbers trickling out of America's government-controlled liquor markets tell a story that no amount of marketing can paper over. For the 12 months ending July 2026, Canadian whisky sales in US control sta

The Counterintuitive Economics of Tariffs: How a 2018 Trade War Put Cheaper Whiskey on Most American Shelves — But Not in Kentucky or Tennessee When the Trump administration lit the fuse on a global trade war in 2018, the conventional wisdom inside the spirits industry was that everyone would lose

Kentucky to Canada: How the Great Booze Ban Became a Bargaining Chip in the Most Consequential Trade Fight in a Generation For American bourbon and whiskey producers, Canada has long been more than a neighbor — it has been a lifeline. Millions of cases of Tennessee whiskey, Kentucky bourbon, and c