US spirits trade body The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (Discus) has urged incoming president Donald Trump to exempt tipples like tequila, Canadian whiskey and scotch from any universal tariffs on imported goods.
The spirits industry had been “weighed down by retaliatory tariffs as part of unrelated trade disputes since 2018” Discus president Chris Swonger said.
Trump’s incoming administration is proposing to introduce blanket tariffs of 10% on foreign-made goods imported into the US in a bid to boost the domestic economy.
Discus was “directly engaging with the Trump transition team” and would do “all we can to avoid tariffs on distilled spirits”, Swonger said.
“Imposing a tariff on tequila and Canadian whisky from two of our largest trading partners could kick off more retaliatory tariffs on American spirits to Canada and Mexico,” he warned.
As these products could, by definition, only be made in their country of origin, tariffs on importing them would not “boost American jobs simply because they cannot be produced in the United States”, he said.
Alongside the blanket import tariffs being proposed by Trump, US whiskey and other US spirits are set to be hit by a 50% tariff on exports to the EU from March 2025.
Presently, tariffs – imposed over a trade dispute related to EU steel and aluminium which dates back to Trump’s first term in office – are suspended until March 2025 while talks continue.
“The US spirits sector continues to experience a slowdown,” Swonger said. “At the end of the day, tariffs on spirits products are going to hurt US consumers and lead to job losses.”
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