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The United States craft beer brewery already have enough problems, including lower sales, millennials and generation Z, do not drink as much as their elders and their persistent impacts of the pandemic recession.
There is now a new threat: President Donald Trump’s rates, which include 25 percent of imported steel and aluminum and on goods from Canada and Mexico.
“It will cost the industry a substantial amount of money,” said Matt Cole, a brewery teacher of Fat Head’s Brewery, based in Ohio.
Trump’s “commercial war” will be paralyzing for our industry if this is carried out in months and years. “
The tariffs, some of which have been suspended until April 2, could affect the brewers in a large and small way, said Bart Watson, president and CEO of the Association of Cerveceros, the commercial group of craft beer.
Aluminum cans are in Trump’s sights.
And almost all steel barrels used by US brewers are made in Germany, so a rate of finished steel products increases the cost of barrels.
Tariffs on Canadian products such as barley and malt would also increase costs.
And some brewers depend on raspberries and other fruits in Mexico, said Watson.
In Port City Brewing in Alexandria, Virginia, founder Bill Butcher, worries that he has to increase the price of a package of six of his most selling optimal ingenuity and other beers at $ 18.99 from around $ 12.99, and collect more for a pint in his tasting room.
“Will people continue to come here and pay $ 12 per pinta instead of $ 8?” He said.
“Our business will decrease speed.”
For Port City, the greatest threat comes from the imminent tariff on Canadian imports.
Every three weeks, the brewery receives a truck of 40,000 pounds from Malta Pilsner of Canada, which enters a silo of 55,000 pounds on the lands of the brewery.
Butcher said that it cannot find a comparable quality malt anywhere else.
Trump tariffs also arrived in Port City in a round way: the aluminum tax, which entered into force on March 12, is causing large brewers to change aluminum cans to bottles.
Port City, who bottles 70 percent of his beer, found himself unable to obtain bottles.
“Our bottle provider is cutting us at the end of the month,” said Butcher.
“That caught us by surprise.”
Fat Head’s Brewery gets his barley from Canada.
Cole said he could change Fuentes in Idaho and Montana, but shipping logistics is more complicated.
And Trump’s tariffs, by putting Canadian barley at a competitive disadvantage, would allow US producers to increase national prices.
Fat Head’s is trying to mitigate the impact of rates.
Anticipating higher aluminum prices, for example, the brewery stored beer cans, which obtains from an American supplier, and now has three million cans in its warehouse, 30 percent of what you need annually.
It has also changed production to painted cans, which are cheaper than those with films of wrapped in contraction.
In Arizona, some brewers are already eliminating or reducing the beers they offer in aluminum cans to reduce costs, said Cale Aylsworth, sales director and relationships at Ohso Brewery and Distillery and President of Arizona Craft Brewsers Guild.
“This is a blow to Arizona Craft. I hate seeing fewer local options on the shelf,” said Aylsworth.
Some brewers have also lost access to the stores of a large client: Canada, which is the main foreign market for American craft beer, which represents almost 38 percent of exports.
But the Canadians are furious because Trump pointed to their products, and Canadian importers have been canceling orders and taking beer from the store shelves.
Tariffs arrive at a time already difficult for brewers.
After years of constant growth, the number of American breweries doubled with more than 9,736 duplication between 2014 and 2024, the industry is struggling to compete with Seltzers and other drinks and win the youngest customers.
In 2024, Cervecería closures exceeded the openings for the first time since the mid -2000s, Watson said of the Association of Brewery.
He estimates that American craft beer production fell two percent to three percent last year.
“Artisanal beer had a period of phenomenal growth, but we are no longer at that time,” he said. “We are in a more mature market.”
The production of Port City reached its maximum point in 2019 to 16,000 beer barrels, equivalent to 220,000 boxes.
Then Covid hit and hit the company’s barrel beer business in bars and restaurants.
The return has been slow.
Butcher expects Port City to produce 13,000 barrels this year.
The brewery seeks to differentiate emphasizing its award -winning beers.
In 2015, Port City was appointed little brewer of the year at the Great American Beer Festival.
But it is not easy with import taxes that threaten to increase the cost of ingredients and packaging.
“It is quite difficult to manage a small business when its supply chain is intact,” he said.
And the erratic way that Trump has launched taxes, announcing them, then suspending them and then threatening new ones, has made it even more difficult to plan.
“Unpredictability only injects an element of chaos,” said Butcher.
Aylsworth, in Arizona, said that great brewers have whole teams of people to calculate the impact of tariffs, but smaller brewers must stretch their resources to navigate them.
That is aware of the other complexities of administering a brewery, from zoning laws to license permits, to labor shortages.
But for many brewers, the heaviest load at this time is the lowest sales as customers reduce beer, said Aylsworth.
That is why many brewers are trying not to increase prices.
“In today’s world, with the economy and the high level of uncertainty, people spend less,” Cole said.
“Beer is an affordable luxury, and we want to make sure not to lose that.”
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