President Donald Trump’s trade wars have not only “ticked off” America’s trading partners, but they are also threatening to kill a staple good that the U.S. has exported for more than a century, according to one analyst.
On Friday, bourbon maker Jim Beam announced that it is closing a distillery in Kentucky in 2026 as the whiskey industry navigates the fallout from Trump’s tariffs, ABC News reported. The closure will not impact the company’s bottling or warehousing operations, according to the report, but raises questions about the future of the industry at a time of great economic upheaval.
According to data from the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, distilled exports to Canada have dropped by 85% this year because of Trump’s tariffs. Overall, exports of spirits are down 9% year-to-date compared to last year.
Catherine Rampell, economics editor at The Bulwark, discussed how Trump’s trade wars are impacting bourbon makers, and the spirits industry more broadly, on a new episode of the “Bulwark Takes” on Monday.
“It does portend a poor forecast for what they expect the market to be like in the next few years,” Rampell said. “And Trump is going to be around for a few more years and probably will have continued to enrage our trading partners around the world even long after he is gone. I think that, as we have discussed many times over at The Bulwark, the damage of Trump administration policies and luster and everything else will long outlast this administration.”
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