Trade war with Canada has contributed to a significant decline in U.S. liquor sales
Jim Beam, one of the largest makers of American whiskey globally, is shutting down bourbon production at one of its Kentucky distilleries for a year.
The move comes amid Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada, which has contributed to a significant decline in U.S. liquor sales after the country ushered in a boycott of American booze, and as more young adults are cutting back on drinking.
Jim Beam, owned by Suntory Global Spirits, is one of Kentucky’s biggest bourbon producers.
The Bluegrass state’s $9 billion whiskey bourbon industry has been struggling to manage its abundant supply of liquor against the drop in demand.
Anecdotally, I know some folks who work under the UAW. Before/after a recent round of significant layoffs because of these big, beautiful tariffs, even the union leadership was spouting off how manufacturing would return to the US within years and it would be “worth it.” Some of the workers who already didn’t want to jump in bed with Trump ate it up. You would think at least leadership in a massive union overseeing any manufacturing/production would at least understand how this was a bad move for their whole organization, but here we are.
The whole reason why the auto sector exists in Canada is the lower health care costs.
GM alone spends $17M/year just on viagra for it’s employees.
Always glad to have an opportunity to understand another country’s healthcare system and it’s inner-workings. Appreciate it 🤙🏻 I remember right-wing people in USA Air Traffic Control would bring up Canada’s ATC system and workers, and I would just always bring up retirement/benefits for the differences in pay and how we paid for them anyway - and less efficiently. Plus I’m quite certain their guaranteed workers’ protections were better than what we got from the union directly (not USA union bashing at all - just strictly the bennies in comparison).
Why should tariffs not work? What else could bring back manufacturing?
Surely if you want to force manufacturing back to a country via tarrifs you need to be smart and have a graduated tarrif over say 15 years increasing annually. That puts the market on notice but more importantly gives time for infrastructure and skills to be developed without immediately fucking over the population
There is no time for that. The military supposedly is preparing for a war with China as early as 2027, but more likely is 2030 when Europe wants to be ready for Russia.
Even if you build the infrastructure, there will still be Tariffs on the raw materials. The production stateside wouldn’t be significant enough to offset that in any way with how things have been built the past 30+ years. If that hypothesis would even be the end goal, they likely would’ve saved more by pumping out extra acquisitions in the handful of years tariffs have rammed the economy and USA society at its most basic levels *ETA realized I might’ve more/less double-talked on @[email protected]