According to the Distilled Spirits Council, the American whiskey industry was on pace to see a 28 percent increase in exports to other countries in 2018, but then something happened; Trump launched a trade war.
The industry trade group says the increase in exports seen during the first half of 2018 vanished and exports actually declined by over 8 percent after Trump imposed his tariffs.
But once levies from Canada, Mexico, China and the European Union took effect, the collective whiskey exports from 37 U.S. states fell by 8 percent in the period from July to November last year, compared with the same five months in 2017, according to the Washington-based industry trade group.
The tariff-induced drop wiped out the overseas sales gain the industry had enjoyed in the first half of 2018, the group’s data showed. [...]
In the wake of the EU’s imposing 25 percent tariffs last June, U.S. whiskey exports fell 8.7 percent in the following five months, compared with the same period in 2017.
Canada’s 10 percent duties that took effect on July 1 resulted in an 8.3 percent sales decline in that country for American whiskey producers in the July-November period compared with the same period a year earlier, the group said.
Taken together -- a 28 percent increase in exports that vanished and an 8 percent decline -- this means exports actually dropped by about 36 percent between the first and second half of 2018.
There's no reason to think these conditions will improve anytime soon because this is not directly related Trump's trade war with China or the trade talks that are happening in China this week.
Retaliatory tariffs on American booze were imposed in response to Trump's tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum and the Trump regime is not even considering lifting those tariffs.
Foreign tariffs on American whiskey are here to stay for the foreseeable future. They may not be lifted until Trump is out of office.
This is all happening because Trump wanted to grease the palms of metal industry executives and predominately white labor unions who backed Trump in 2016. There's been no net economic or "national security" benefit from any of Trump's various machinations.