Americans will see fewer Canadian brands on the shelf if a planned U.S. ban takes effect later this month. But one Canadian whiskey maker — Crown Royal — has positioned itself to escape the import restrictions the Trump administration has threatened to impose.
President Trump on Tuesday announced the bans on Canadian exports of alcoholic beverages, dairy products and motorcycles after Canada imposed counter-tariffs on roughly $20 billion in U.S. goods. The ban is scheduled to take effect Sept. 29.
While tariffs take time to work their way through supply chains and trickle down to consumers, a ban would be felt more immediately because the restricted Canadian products would be removed from store shelves and dealer lots as soon as existing inventory is sold, experts told CBS News.
“Tariffs take time to get to consumers, but a ban effectively removes the product and supplier at any price, immediately,” said Wendong Zhang, an economist at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. “There’s no negotiating — when a consumer goes to a store, there is a ‘deshelving’ of Canadian product.”
The Trump administration ban applies only to the importation of the specified Canadian goods and doesn’t prevent the sale of products already in the U.S.
Brett House, an economist at Columbia Business School, criticized the ban.
“It’s bad for everyone. It either completely cuts off or raises the costs for American consumers to continue buying these goods,” he told CBS News.
U.S. consumers could turn to domestic substitutes, he noted. “None of those three categories are things you can only get from Canada. But the thing you’re switching to might not be higher cost, but could be lower satisfaction resulting from not being able to get the exact product you want.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on claims that the ban would limit choice for U.S. consumers.
Crown Royal, a popular Canadian whiskey brand sold in the U.S., had taken steps to protect its access to the American market before the Trump administration’s ban on liquor imports from its northern neighbor. Although the company still distills its whiskey in Manitoba, Canada, it previously moved its bottling operations from an Ontario plant to Alabama.
While a White House proclamation still bans the export of Canadian alcohol to the U.S., the ban’s fine print offers a workaround for Crown Royal. Details in an annex outlining banned goods note that only whiskies in containers of less than four liters are banned from U.S. import. That means Canadian whiskies can still cross the border in containers larger than four liters.
Crown Royal did not immediately respond to a request for comment on how the U.S. ban would affect its business.
