{"id":110901,"date":"2026-07-22T14:24:34","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T18:24:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=110901"},"modified":"2026-07-22T14:24:34","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T18:24:34","slug":"opinion-michael-armstrong-discusses-provincial-bans-on-u-s-alcohol-imports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2026\/07\/opinion-michael-armstrong-discusses-provincial-bans-on-u-s-alcohol-imports\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Michael Armstrong discusses provincial bans on U.S. alcohol imports"},"content":{"rendered":"

This piece written by Michael Armstrong, Associate Professor of Operations Research at Brock University<\/em>, originally appeared in The Conversation<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

U.S. President Donald Trump has escalated his trade war with Canada,\u00a0announcing 50 per cent tariffs on a range of Canadian goods, from wine and hockey sticks to cement and dairy products. The new rates will take effect in 30 days.<\/p>\n

The White House claims\u00a0the increase, imposed under a rarely used provision of the Tariff Act, is in retaliation for Canada\u2019s \u201cdiscrimination against and unreasonable and unequal treatment of U.S. commerce.\u201d It points specifically to Ontario and Qu\u00e9bec restrictions on American alcohol sales.<\/p>\n

Those provincial restrictions are part of a massive\u00a0boycott of alcoholic beverages. Eleven provinces and territories have avoided importing U.S. alcohol for the past 16 months. Most cleared out their existing stock last year, though Ontario and Qu\u00e9bec still hold about $96 million worth.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s tariff announcement makes this an opportune time for those two provinces to put their existing inventories back on the shelves while maintaining their import bans. That would offer a diplomatic gesture to U.S. officials while saving provincial taxpayers millions of dollars.<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s premiers\u00a0are meeting this week in Prince Edward Island\u00a0to discuss the country\u2019s biggest challenges. Their discussions will likely include the alcohol standoff.<\/p>\n

United in theory, divided in practice<\/strong><\/p>\n

The\u00a0booze ban began\u00a0in February 2025 in response to Trump\u2019s initial tariffs on Canadian goods. All 13 provincial and territorial governments ordered their liquor agencies to stop selling U.S. alcohol and to stop ordering more.<\/p>\n

The boycott was short-lived\u00a0in Alberta\u00a0and\u00a0Saskatchewan. They both resumed buying and selling American booze in June 2025.<\/p>\n

The other 11 governments remain united in banning alcohol imports. But they\u2019ve differed in how they\u2019ve handled their existing stock.<\/p>\n

British Columbia,\u00a0New Brunswick\u00a0and\u00a0Yukon\u00a0stopped selling U.S. alcohol in government liquor stores but cleared out their stocks via wholesale sales to restaurants and bars.<\/p>\n

Manitoba,\u00a0Nunavut\u00a0and the\u00a0Atlantic provinces\u00a0began selling off their inventories last year. Some discounted the prices and donated part of the proceeds to charity.<\/p>\n

Qu\u00e9bec resumed sales\u00a0in February, but only for\u00a0products with short shelf lives. As of March, it still held U.S. alcohol worth $17 million.<\/p>\n

Ontario, by contrast, hasn\u2019t sold any of the\u00a0$79 million\u00a0worth of U.S. inventory it pulled off shelves. As a result, it had to\u00a0write off $2.6 million in expired product\u00a0and spend $8 million to store the remainder. It has also forgone millions of dollars in interest from having that money unproductively tied up.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, these provincial actions have drawn U.S. attention.<\/p>\n

Washington feels the pinch<\/strong><\/p>\n

Because of the bans, U.S. alcohol producers\u2019 exports to Canada\u00a0plunged 76 per cent for wines and 46 per cent for spirits\u00a0in 2025, representing a loss of about\u00a0$725 million in sales. That equates to about $62 million for every month the dispute continues, or about $1.2 billion so far.<\/p>\n

U.S. producers worry about losing market share over the longer term. Canadians are getting accustomed to\u00a0sipping local wines and spirits\u00a0instead of American ones. Some may never switch back.<\/p>\n

Those industry pains have prompted U.S. politicians to complain. This month, for instance, a\u00a0Republican congresswoman proposed legislation\u00a0to punish the boycotting provinces, while a\u00a0Democratic senator pleaded for provinces\u00a0to resume selling California wines.<\/p>\n

Now Trump has followed through with tariffs of his own on top of an earlier threat to\u00a0hit Canada with levies over cross-border wildfire smoke.<\/p>\n

Of course, getting U.S. attention was a key goal of the provincial boycotts in the first place. Having achieved that, Ontario and Qu\u00e9bec now have an opportunity to diplomatically deploy their American alcohol stockpiles.<\/p>\n

Sell the stock, keep the ban<\/strong><\/p>\n

So far, neither\u00a0Ontario\u00a0nor\u00a0Qu\u00e9bec\u00a0is backing down from their bans.<\/p>\n

But they could instead seize the moment to resume business-as-usual retailing of their existing U.S. inventories, while continuing to ban imports.<\/p>\n

Resuming sales makes economic sense. That liquor has already been paid for. Storing it any longer has no financial impact on U.S. producers, but it costs provincial taxpayers nearly $1 million a month.<\/p>\n

Selling it off instead at regular prices \u2014 roughly double the wholesale cost, in line with typical liquor-board markups \u2014 would yield about $163 million for Ontario and $33 million for Qu\u00e9bec.<\/p>\n

Diplomatically, resuming retail sales of existing inventory would offer a goodwill gesture to U.S. trade negotiators while the continued import ban would keep the pressure on.<\/p>\n

This approach would also set a symbolic timer on Canada-U.S. trade talks, with existing provincial alcohol inventories draining away like sand in an hourglass as American producers watch.<\/p>\n

And it would remind Americans that Canadian politicians do not hate the U.S. alcohol industry. They just want Trump to honour the trade deal he signed with Canada in 2020, which he once called \u201cthe largest, most significant, modern, and balanced trade agreement in history.\u201d<\/p>\n

What comes next<\/strong><\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s new 50 per cent tariffs, if they actually happen, will cause financial stress for many Canadian firms.\u00a0But as with\u00a0his\u00a0previous rounds\u00a0of tariffs, this new batch will mostly be paid for by U.S. consumers through higher prices, further fuelling U.S. inflation. They will also likely face\u00a0legal challenges in U.S. courts.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s always difficult to predict Trump\u2019s next moves. He repeatedly changes his mind and constantly \u201cbullshits.\u201d Are his latest tariffs truly a response to Canada\u2019s trade practices, or does he just want to divert U.S. voter attention from the\u00a0mounting casualties\u00a0and\u00a0costs\u00a0of his\u00a0failing war with Iran?<\/p>\n

It looks unlikely that cross-border trade will get back to pre-Trump normal anytime soon. But if it somehow does, that will be something for Canadian and U.S. consumers to drink to.
\n\"The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Armstrong, Associate Professor of Operations Research at Brock University, recently published a piece in The Conversation about how Canadian provinces could respond to Trump’s latest tariff threat by putting stockpiles of American alcohol back on store shelves while still maintaining import bans. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":110909,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39,6],"tags":[594,4395,5512],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110901"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110901"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110908,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110901\/revisions\/110908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}