Making America Sober Again?

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​Making America Sober Again?

​       These are times that not only try men's and women's souls,

...but surely drive us to drink.  I don't drink, but some days even I want to lose myself in the bottom of a bottle. (Though I usually end up settling for an old-movie binge). 
         But now, just when Americans most need a drink to steady their fraught nerves, the very cause of our national case of nerves, 

...is throwing a wrench in the availability of alcohol to everyday Americans.
​       It started with Donald Trump imposing 25% or so tariffs on just about everything imported from just about anywhere in the world. For those who are still a weence foggy on what exactly a tariff is, it's a tax that a government imposes on imported goods. Exporters pass along the cost of the tariff by jacking up the price of their goods and therefore passing the expense onto the companies receiving their goods, who in turn jack up their prices to kick the expense of the tariff onto the consumers, who are the ones who ultimate pay for the tariffs.  Make sense? Yeah, not to me, either. But in short: Trump imposes the tariffs, we pay the people pay for them. 
       (BTW, back in 1929 a couple of Republican legislators, Reed Smoot and Willis C. Hawley, introduced a bill that became the Smoot-Hawley Tariff when President Herbert Hoover signed it into law. It started with the U.S. slapping tariffs on foreign imports, which caused other countries to retaliate against American tariffs with tariffs of their own, and the next thing you know there's a trade war leading to that world wide catastrophic economic downturn known as The Great Depression).

​       But  anyway, Donald Trump decided to imposed tariffs bigly (as he would say) on foreign imports because―well, I don't know why, exactly; seems it was just something else he wanted to do along with all the other attention-grabbing status quo-wrecking he's been doing. Europe then threatened to retaliate by imposing a 50% tariff on American whiskey, Europeans and Canadians apparently liking their Kentucky bourbon. However, many Europeans and Canadians, in a show of patriotic unity, are now boycotting American alcohol altogether while their liquor dealers are opting to keep it off their shelves.

​        Donald Trump's next shot in escalating this trade war that he started will be, he vows, slamming a 200% tariff on all alcohol products from the European Union. Which means that all the European beers, wines, and whiskeys that Americans love, 
their Stellas and Heinekens,

...their Guinnesses and Jamesons,

...their Beaujolais and champagnes, 

...their chiantis and proseccos,

...will cost Americans three times what they now cost. That is to say, a $15 bottle of wine will  cost a whopping $45.
​      In response, American liquor dealers are predicting that Americans will have to cut back or cut out their purchases of foreign alcohol and some have said that they'll stop ordering products from overseas altogether.
       The thing is, though, Americans drink a lot of imported alcohol, especially wine. Most of the wine we (we, meaning not me) drink comes from Italy and France, and can only be produced in Italy and France because we don't have the grapes or the climate. 
         Of course, the U.S. has its own wineries, but Trump's mass deportation of  undocumented immigrants is threatening to devastate the American wine industry by taking away the migrant workers who pick the grapes. 

​     And so, no grape harvesters, no wine.       
   Oh, and then there's tequila, that comes from Mexico,

...that has been hit by Trump with a 25% tariff. Tequila, which can only be produced in specific parts of Mexico where the blue agave plant grows, is the base for the margarita, the most popular cocktail in the U.S.  

​      And then there's the 25% tariff that Trump has imposed on imported aluminum, which is putting a hurt on American beer producers, as this will up the price of beer cans to the point of possibly bankrupting smaller microbreweries.

     And then, there are the American whiskey and bourbon distilleries, which are already feeling the pain - debilitating, according to the U.S. spirits industry - from the European and Canadian boycotts of their product, and some of whom fear they might not survive the fallout of Donald Trump's trade war.​

          The upshot of all this is that, if the European Union opts to retaliate against Trump's tariffs with its promised 50% tariff on American alcohol and Trump subsequently detonates his 200% tariff on European alcohol, the United States is on the cusp of a major trade war and a major alcohol shortage. There simply won't be nearly enough booze available for Americans. Which might usher in an unexpected (and unwanted) Golden Age of American Sobriety.
             Or maybe just a return to bath tub gin.             

​References:
​https://thehill.com/homenews/5193466-what-alcohol-would-cost-more-under-200-trump-tariff/

​https://apnews.com/article/trump-tariffs-wine-spirits-200-alcohol-dabead2d0e0fad64dc5e6250293ef016

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/12/business/spirits-bourbon-tariffs/index.html

https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/alcohol-cost-more-200-percent-trump-tariff/

​https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/upscale-napa-valley-wineries-fear-trumps-migrant-raids-could-end-them/ar-AA1y4j1G

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/us-spirits-industry-warns-of-debilitating-retaliatory-whiskey-tariffs-from-europe/ar-AA1AM9SI