{"id":173986,"date":"2026-08-19T11:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T11:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/173986\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T11:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T11:52:09","slug":"us-drinks-producers-hold-breath-as-canada-tariff-deal-nears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/173986\/","title":{"rendered":"US drinks producers hold breath as Canada tariff deal nears"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Hamish Graham<\/p>\n

Published:\u00a0 19 August, 2026<\/p>\n

US President Trump has paused the implementation of a 50% tariff on a range of Canadian goods for three days (which were set to be implemented today \u2013 19 August), with the two governments nearing a deal that seeks to avert the heightened export duty.<\/p>\n

Yesterday (18 August) Trump said the US and Canada had a deal \u201csubject to finalisation of documents\u201d. Canadian PM Mark Carney was pleased with progress but added that “there is important work still to be done\u201d.<\/p>\n

In retaliation to the US government\u2019s existing tariffs on Canadian goods \u2013 which include a 15% and 25% levy on Canadian cars and steel\/aluminium, respectively \u2013 many of the nation\u2019s provinces introduced a total ban of US alcohol sales.<\/p>\n

As part of the present negotiations the US is requesting that the alcohol ban be lifted, which the BBC detailed in a recent report<\/a>. All sales of alcohol are controlled by the Canadian provinces, so Mark Carney will require cooperation from regional premiers to implement such a change.<\/p>\n

In July of this year 14 California lawmakers pleaded with the Quebec government to lift its ban on US alcohol sales.<\/p>\n

In response to this intervention Quebec premier Christine Frechette said: \u201cThis measure will remain in place as long as the United States maintains these unjustified tariffs. Our government will re-evaluate its position when the American administration reverses these measures.\u201d<\/p>\n

If current negotiations succeed and a subsequent re-evaluation does indeed take place, US winemakers and distillers could see their products return to Canadian shelves.<\/p>\n

The next step would be encouraging consumers to buy US alcohol products again. A Nanos Research poll last month revealed that 69% of Canadians would not buy such products if they returned to shelves. This figure rises to around 74%, 75% and 81% for consumers in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia, respectively.<\/p>\n

Chris Swonger, Distilled Spirits Council of the United States<\/a> (DISCUS) president and CEO said that the current sales ban is \u201cdiscriminatory\u201d and has \u201cunfairly targeted US distillers for more than a year and a half\u201d.<\/p>\n

In a statement released yesterday he continued: \u201cThese provincial bans have caused exports of American spirits to drop by more than 70%, leaving American distillers caught in the middle of a broader trade dispute.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs discussions continue over the next few days, we encourage leaders on both sides of the border to reach a negotiated solution that gets American spirits back on retail shelves in all Canadian provinces and returns the spirits sector to a zero-for-zero tariff framework.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harpers spoke to Oregon Wine earlier this year<\/a> about the effects of the US-Canadian trade war for the state\u2019s wine industry. Margaret Bray explained at the time that Canada was producers\u2019 top export market with some taking a 15% hit to overall sales due to the alcohol ban.<\/p>\n

Image credit\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Kosta from Pixabay<\/p>\n

Other articles of interest<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Home News By Hamish Graham Published:\u00a0 19 August, 2026 US President Trump has paused the implementation of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17,45747,111,400,401,28,734,55430],"class_list":["post-173986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-canada","tag-discus","tag-mark-carney","tag-tariffs","tag-trade","tag-trump","tag-us","tag-us-wine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}