Jim Beam is pausing distillation at its Kentucky plant in 2026 due to oversupply and weak exports, partly from Canadian tariffs. TJ Walker argues U.S. tariffs hurt American exporters and are triggering production cuts and job losses across industries.
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What can be more American than Jim Beam whiskey? Well, bad news if you're a huge fan. Now, I'm not saying you'll never be able to get it again, but Jim Beam, which is owned by Suntory Global Spirits, is pausing distillation at its main Clermont, Kentucky campus for 2026. Now they're keeping open a visitor center, and I guess that's interesting. I have gone to factories, museums, places like Guinness, so it is interesting to see how things are manufactured. But the shutdown comes as the bourbon industry faces a whiskey glut, softer demand and export headwinds, including major disruption in Canada. This is because of the trade war with Canada and various tariffs. So what does this really mean, folks? It's nice to get sucked into platitudes of America first. First. Wow, I could sound better than that. Who could argue with that? If you're an American America first, let's put up tariffs for these other countries taking advantage of America. There's only one problem with that theory, and that is companies. Good old fashioned American companies like this one, like Jim Beam, like to sell their products to people in other countries. Turns out a lot of Canadians like Jim Beam are. They used to, but they're saying, no, thank you. The government is putting retaliatory, retaliatory tariffs, just as we do to them. And now it's hurting. It's hurting American companies because what do you know that now they're being polite about. They're saying excess inventory because they don't want to point a finger at you know who and the tariff taxes. They don't want to pick fights. But this is a part of the whole trade wars. You know, it's fun to say, let's have a trade war and we know we're going to win. Guess what? Other countries can fight back. They can slap tariffs on our products. Plus a lot of their citizens can say, hey, we're tired of you telling us we're worthless. We're tired of you telling us that you're going to take over. We're tired of you mocking us as a 51st state. That appears to be what's happening here. So Canadian provinces pulled U.S. alcohol off shelves after the March 2025 tariff escalation. It created an immediate demand for American distillers that rely on that export channel. This is according to Business Insider. And it's causing a real problem now. Even when tariffs don't fully kill demand, they create uncertainty. Will the tariff rate change next quarter? Will the retaliatory ban expand? Will distributors shift Shelf space permanently. All of this means that distillers have to freeze hiring, delay capital expenditure, reduce production. This is the last thing any business wants. So I've said it before, I'll say it again. I am an equal opportunity offender here. I think the Democrats are frankly really, really stupid in the way they've handled this issue. They talk about tariffs, they should specifically talk about tariff taxes. That's what it is. And conservatives are in fact right. When you tax something, you get less of it. Well, they're taxing in this case Jim Beam whiskey, and you're going to get less of it in terms of sales. That's exactly what's happening. It's happening again and again and again throughout our economy. And Democrats, they never lose an opportunity to botch a branding opportunity. They should consistently be referring to this as a tariff tax. And if they were really smart, they'd be calling it a job killing tariff tax because that's what is happening, folks. It's true. We're not seeing massive, massive unemployment, although it is ticking up. Unemployment is slowly going up because of things like this. If it weren't for the massive AI spending boom and building data centers, I think we would see really high unemployment. But I play by the facts here. Unemployment has not hit 5% yet. It's still in a range considered acceptable to most economists. But some people are losing their jobs at the Jim Beam distillery, that's for sure, because other countries want to retaliate. Here's the bigger problem with all of these tariffs is so many American made companies have to import pieces of their product, raw materials to build their products in America and those are facing tariffs. So those, those taxes are passed on to you, the American consumer. It's also tacked on to the end price regardless of where it's shipped around the world, making American products less economical, less viable. So it's hurting it a lot of different ways because trade is really complex, it just is. And anytime someone tries to tell you it's really very simple, they're either lying or they don't understand it themselves. Okay, let's look at how this is affecting other industries because the whiskey distillery business, that's only one business. Some bigger businesses that are being hurt by tariffs. General Motors, according to Reuters, reported a $1.1 billion tariff hit and reiterated a potential 4 billion to 5 billion full year impact. This is what is being reported by Reuters. Ford has been navigating major policy driven headwinds. Reuters reporting ties Ford's strategy, financial moves to the tariff environment and broader Policy shifts. So if you travel all over the world as I do, you see General Motors cars everywhere, you see Ford cars everywhere. And you also, if you, if you look at how things are, are built for any car, they have to import all kinds of pieces for these cars, not to mention rare earth minerals, especially for the battery operated cars from all over the world and places like China. And it is causing massive, massive disruption. Look at Harley Davidson again. According to Reuters, it pulled its 2025 outlook and Warren tariffs would really hit their bottom line. Caterpillar not run by communists in New York City. The last time I checked, the Caterpillar company estimated tariffs would cost roughly 1.5 to $1.8 billion to their company in 2025. John Deere, the tractor company, last time I checked, they didn't have a big major outpost in New York City. They are in the heartland. They are in rural, they're big in rural areas. The executives discussed a tariff bill expected to double from 600 million to $1.2 billion. That's how much they're going to lose in 2026, 600 million in 2025. This is based on an earnings call earlier this year. Boeing said it may need to resell aircraft as tariffs disrupted deliveries into China. Nike said that tariffs are expected to cost $1.5 billion because guess what? Nike, Great American company, they like to sell their products worldwide. Stanley, Black and Decker. There's a manly company for you. A manly product. They repeatedly cut profit outlook this year like large tariff imports and mitigation cost. Again, according to Reuters, Whirlpool forecast a nine figure tariff dent and discussed ongoing tariff cost in recent calls with analysts. Jack Daniels. So it's not Jim Beam is the only one. They cited a Canadian boycott as a factor hurting sales and the trade dispute environment really hurting them. So folks, we're kind of getting a lucky break with this massive, massive, massive spending on artificial intelligence. It's kind of propping up the economy because there are many things trying to bring it down. And it's one thing to say I'm going to shut down the Democrat cities, I'm going to send troops to la. I'm going to send troops to Democratic cities like Chicago and think, well, that doesn't affect me. I live out here in the heartland. Well, the heartland is being affected by these extremist, arguably socialist policies emanating from Washington D.C. i can't think of any companies that seem like they're more a part of the heartland than Caterpillar, John Deere, Harley Davidson and General Motors and they're all hurting because of the Trump tariff tax. That's alliterative. Why don't Democrats say that Trump tariff taxes are hurting American businesses? Don't listen to me. Listen to these conservative companies in the private sector. Talk about actual real tax numbers. They're seeing sales go down because as conservatives say, and they're right, when you tax something, you get less of it. And America, with its tariff tax is now getting less of sales and it's reducing in factory shutdowns and loss of jobs thanks to the Trump tariff tax.
