Wow, We Sure Drank a Lot Last Year
A trade war and a bar-closing pandemic didn’t slow down the U.S. liquor industry, but the hangover from 2020’s binge might.
The pandemic helped drive record sales for the U.S. liquor industry last year.
Source: Bloomberg
It’s been a turbulent couple of years for U.S. distillers. Starting in June 2018 they became collateral damage in then-President Donald Trump’s trade wars, with the European Union levying a 25% tariff on U.S.-made whiskey in retaliation for new U.S. duties on imported steel and aluminum. Tariffs on other alcoholic beverages followed from both the U.S. and EU, mostly as part of a battle over aircraft-manufacturing subsidies. “We’ve been a casualty of a very challenging trade war,” the chief executive officer of Brown-Forman Corp., the Louisville, Kentucky-based distiller of Jack Daniels, Woodford Reserve and Old Forester whiskeys, told Bloomberg News recently.
Not to mention a pandemic that shut down bars around the world. Must have been a really tough stretch for Brown-Forman, right? Well ...