Because Trump won’t learn from history, a similar chain reaction is playing out today.
In March 2018, Trump announced worldwide steel and aluminum tariffs, on spurious “national security” grounds. Understandably, other countries — including allies — were furious, and they began levying reciprocal duties on U.S. goods.
Many of them taxed U.S. goods produced in politically strategic areas: Iowa-farmed soybeans, Wisconsin-made motorcycles, Florida orange juice. And, of course, Kentucky bourbon, among other American whiskeys.
And that’s how Trump’s metal wars inadvertently set off a whiskey war, which no one asked for and no one in the industry wants.
New trade data, released by the United States last week, shows how painful these tariffs have been. Global U.S. whiskey exports declined 16 percent in 2019 compared with a year earlier. Exports to the European Union — the U.S. spirits industry’s largest export market — fell 27 percent.
