Liquor Industry Awaits the Trump Effect

Neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden drinks alcohol. But Trump's family owns a winery in Virginia, and Biden does not.

I'm a Democrat and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. If you are worried about Trump's impact on the nation and the world, I might agree with you. But the wine and spirits industry has reason to be both apprehensive AND optimistic about the change in the White House.

Here are a few of the ways that "Trump II: Rogue Nation" might be different from the current administration on alcohol policy.

Tariffs are the number one concern. In his first term in office, Trump slapped tariffs of 25 percent on some European wines and whiskies. These were the result of trade disputes, including one over airplane subsidies that had been going on since 2004. Trump didn't start these fights, but he did escalate.

Now, Trump comes into office having made tariffs a promise of his campaign. He has suggested tariffs on all goods from Mexico, Canada and China. That would affect a lot more than Tequila, Crown Royal and baiju. Wineries and distilleries import a lot of glass from China, for example.

Also, US wines and spirits do well in the Canadian market, but that might change if Canada imposes retaliatory tariffs of its own.

Second, Trump has promised to deport every illegal immigrant in the United States. Good luck with that: it's estimated that the US has about 16 million illegal immigrants, or about 5 percent of the total population.

But just the threat of immigration raids would be devastating in wine country.

Wine grapes need to be harvested when they're ready. ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) can track harvest season like anyone else. The workers will be there when the grapes are ready. If ICE is also there, many of the workers who aren't arrested might split for someplace safer. By the time they return, those grapes could be raisins.

We got a preview last week in Bakersfield, CA, and Trump isn't even in office yet. The Border Patrol staged an immigration raid during the middle of citrus harvest season. They arrested people dressed for farm work at gas stations and breakfast shops, and they pulled over cars on the main highway. Farmworkers were nearly completely absent from the area the day afterward.

Now imagine a raid like this during Napa Valley just as Cabernet hits peak ripeness.

Arresting farmworkers is foolish. Americans will pay higher prices for scarcer fruit and vegetables. If Trump wants to, he could make 2025 The Year Without Lettuce (not a euphemism). Rumors indicate that Trump does occasionally eat salad, so it's possible he'll give veggies a break.

But wineries better have a backup labor plan.

Health issues

Then there are regulatory issues. The dietary guidelines will have a new referee. The Biden administration has been openly hostile to wine, so this is a good thing.

We have covered the battle over the 2025 dietary guidelines recently. In a nutshell, the Biden administration attempted to put a temperance group for children, the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking, in charge of deciding how much alcohol American adults can safely consume. The Biden Administration further stacked the deck by including researchers funded by anti-alcohol groups on the ICCPUD committee.

Congress assigned the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to do a rigorous study of the existing research on alcohol and health. NASEM delivered its report in December and it showed that moderate consumption of alcohol reduces your risk of heart attack and stroke, and thus while it does increase your cancer risk, overall it lowers all-cause mortality.

Biden's surgeon general promptly turned around, ignored the peer-reviewed NASEM study by 14 leading researchers, and called for a cancer warning label on alcohol. He did not address heart disease – the number one cause of death in the US.

And then ICCPUD issued its report and unsurprisingly contradicted the much better NASEM report. Don't complain to me about RFK Jr when the Biden administration is ignoring science. Losing Biden as the ultimate referee in this skirmish is a huge win for the alcohol industry.

Speaking of Robert F. Kennedy Jr, we don't know whether or not he will be confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services. If he is confirmed, we don't know what his stance will be on alcohol.

RFK Jr has talked about his struggles with addiction. Biden apparently sees alcohol as nothing more than an addictive substance. If RFK Jr is the same, at least it won't be worse. But RFK Jr is a true wild card who has spoken about, among other things, a parasitic worm that ate part of his brain. We just don't know what he'll do.

I will say this. I follow a lot of issue-oriented food writers. We're all worried about RFK Jr's stances on vaccines. But food policy people like him. If he really does take action against ultraprocessed foods, the food industry (think multinational corporations, not broccoli farmers) will protest, but he would make the US healthier.

And wine is – or at least can be – a very natural product. I'd be willing to accept, say, something like 50 or 75 mg sulfite limits in wine in exchange for alcohol policy created for adults and based on science. That would be a win-win for wine lovers.

Trump has said that he might withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO).

The WHO has also been campaigning against alcohol. This makes sense from a WHO perspective: binge drinking and alcoholism cause tremendous damage to public health. Nations like the UK that have national health-care systems will save a lot of lives, and money, if they can curb alcoholism and binge drinking.

However, the WHO has been conducting this campaign with a blunderbuss, firing away at moderate drinkers with no nuance (or applicable research) whatsoever. Alcohol isn't the reason Trump might withdraw from the WHO, but the major US alcohol trade organizations won't complain.

It's not about alcohol

Trump's tax cuts of 2017 were very popular with the alcohol industry. The powerful Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America is already lobbying to keep them. I'll bet they succeed.

Which leads to this: Trump's most important impact on wine and spirits will have nothing to do with alcohol. If the economy soars under Trump, people will drink more wine. If we go into a recession, we might not drink less, but we will spend less.

I'm not going to spend time here arguing whether or not Trump will be good for the economy. If you ask five economists, you'll get seven opinions. But the fate of the economy probably outweighs everything else I have written here in importance.

Culturally, we have elected another teetotaler. Stupid us! Historically, the best Presidents from both parties have enjoyed a drink. But, here we are. Trump is less of a Puritan than Biden, and less likely to act like your dour old uncle regarding alcohol. Trump is laissez-faire as opposed to nanny state. It's part of his whole shtick.

But that said, Trump hates France. He hates California. He's not shy about saying so. Constantly bashing California and France might not be good for the image of wine.

Here is where I'm glad Eric Trump is running Trump Winery in Virginia. Wine doesn't have to come from California or France to be delicious. If I were in the California wine industry I'd be afraid of Trump, mainly because of the potential for immigration raids. But, if I were in the burgeoning Virginia wine country, I might welcome him.

He's not Biden. That's a plus.