Due to President Donald Trump’s trade conflict, Kentucky’s alcohol shipments to Canada have drastically decreased, threatening the economy of one of the most conservative states in the nation. As a result, the sole Democrat in Kentucky’s congressional representation is raising concerns about this issue.
During a recent appearance with ABC News,
Rep. Morgan McGarvey (D-Ky.), representing Kentucky’s most populous city, Louisville, stated that Canadian retailers have ceased purchasing bourbon from the state due to President Trump’s trade measures. Following Mr. Trump informing Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney during their Tuesday meeting at the Oval Office that he has not altered his stance on tariffs, McGarvey noted that numerous residents within his district are suffering significant consequences because of these policy choices.
Canada, particularly Kentucky, is our biggest trade ally,” McGarvey stated. “We will forfeit hundreds of millions of dollars in bourbon revenue just from Ontario province, let alone across the entire nation, due to the impact of Trump’s policies.
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McGarvey further observed that while the Trump administration has said that the tariffs aren’t going to change, it has also suggested that the president’s import duties are a negotiating tactic toward obtaining future trade deals. The Kentucky Democrat said those two positions were incongruous. And he added that Trump’s haphazard implementation of the new trade taxes has proven chaotic for Louisville’s distilleries (which include mass-distributed brands like Old Forester, Angel’s Envy, Evan Williams and Rabbit Hole, among others).
“If you’re using tariffs as a negotiating tactic, but then you say there’s nothing you can do to get rid of it, that’s going to be problematic,” he said. “There was one week I was working with the bourbon companies in my district where, quite literally, on Monday, the tariffs were on. On Tuesday, they were off. On Wednesday, they were on. On Thursday, they were off again.”
McGarvey isn’t the only Kentucky lawmaker speaking out against Trump’s tariffs. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has been an outspoken opponent of the new import taxes specifically because of harm to Kentucky’s bourbon industry, and has proposed legislation to undo the state of emergency Trump declared to impose tariffs without Congress. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has also come out against the tariffs,
writing an opinion piece for the Louisville Courier-Journal
detailing the harm they would cause to the state’s distilleries.
“Broad-based tariffs could have long-term consequences right in our backyard,” McConnell wrote in February. “Consider our state’s 75,000 family farms that sell their crops around the globe, or the hardworking Kentuckians who craft 95% of the world’s bourbon, or our auto industry that relies on global supply chains to support the livelihoods of thousands of workers in the commonwealth.”
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