Trump’s Return to Power Has Been Bad for the Beer Business
Against all odds, another fiscal quarter is in the books. Did you pay your taxes earlier this week? Follow-up question: Why? It’s not like the people running this country do! And yet we soldier on. (Hopefully not literally.)
Today, as has become Hop Take tradition, we take stock of the beer industry’s past three-ish months. Think of it like an earnings report, but more fun, and less regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Editorially speaking: Sh*t is gnarly out there, man. There are trade wars abroad, and a war on the Constitution here at home. Is beer really recession-proof? Is it global depression-proof? If the first few months of President Donald Trump’s second term are any indication, we’re going to find out, and sooner rather than later. The supply-chain tumult, the collapse in consumer confidence, the sheer uncertainty of day-to-day operation — ain’t none of it good for the beer business.
Trade group leaders and pedigreed chief executives atop the industry have been reluctant to say so explicitly, to avoid incurring the autocratic, self-serving wrath of America’s small-hander-in-chief. On the other side of the spectrum, rank-and-file craft brewery workers are more precarious, but more candid. “More than anything, the political climate is making everyone anxious about what’s next for the market,” a production employee at a mid-major brewery on the East Coast told me via text the other day. “Economic collapse was a lot less scary when I wasn’t middle-aged.”
On that grim note, let’s get into it. Here’s your Hop Take Quarterly Beer Business Report Card for the first frame of 2025.
Subject: Government
Grade: C-
The good news for the industry is that thanks to Trump’s hyperpartisan, Elon Musk-abetted purge of the federal administrative state, there may not be anybody left at the Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services to write up more stringent intake suggestions in the 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which had been the industry’s bugbear for most of last year. The bad news is… I don’t know, man, everything else? To the extent that any corporate lobby has managed to extricate itself from Trump’s obsessive protectionist regime, it ain’t the brewing business, what with the on-again, off-again levies on key industry inputs like aluminum and barley, and the chauvinistic antagonism of the industry’s most important importer and exporter. The Brewers Association is still waiting on a call back from the Commerce Department as to whether that threatened 25 percent tariff on imported aluminum cans includes the liquid inside, for chrissakes. Meanwhile, the industry’s most powerful D.C. booster, the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA), tapped washed-up MAGA-lebrity Kellyanne Conway for advice on how to achieve its long-running goal of codifying the Trump 1.0 tax deduction on pass-through entities into a permanent tax cut. Tough scenes abound.
Subject: Fluid (Sales) Dynamics
Grade: D+
Super Bowl beer sales were soft. St. Patrick’s Day sales were softer. With respect to the good people at BeerBoard, every successive batch of data they sent me on draft sales these past three months depressed me a bit more than the last — and I don’t even own a bar. Mexican imports, something of a bright spot last year, finally met a market they couldn’t match. Late last month, for the first time since taking Grupo Modelo’s U.S. rights off Anheuser-Busch InBev’s hands way back in 2013, Constellation Brands’ beer division posted a quarterly sales decline. The NBWA’s Beer Purchasers’ Index is a bit of a black box, so take it with a grain of salt, but it’s been screaming warning signs. Tax-paids were looking so bleak in February 2025 that the Beer Institute’s chief economist warned everybody to take a deep breath about it. The only segment that lost more sales dollars than craft beer in Q1 scan data for multi-outlet grocery, mass retail, and convenience stores tracked by market research firm Circana was — wait for it — domestic premium. Gulp.
Subject: Innovation Lab
Grade: B-
Brewers announced some smart new products this cycle. Constellation Brands teased a new malt-based riot punch called Rule of Five; Boston Beer Company, a hard juice brand called Just Hard Squeezed and a Code Red version of Hard Mtn. Dew; and Lagunitas launched Uncensored Punch, which it describes as “red cosmic chaos in a can.” Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. boosted its workhorse Big Little Thing hazy imperial India Pale Ale to 9.5 percent alcohol-by-volume in hopes of restoring some of its early-decade momentum by realigning it with drinkers’ high-potency preferences. Pabst Brewing Company will try its hand at the struggling American light lager segment with Pabst Light. This all makes sense to me. None of it is, like, “innovative” in the true sense of the word, but it all makes sense.
Subject: Social Studies
Grade: D-
It has been unpleasant, if unsurprising, to watch the notional leaders of the American brewing business try to chart a course in the first few months of Trump 2.0: 2 Fash 2 Injurious. After wailing about the evils of “ideology” in public-health research vis-a-vis the DGAs last year, the NBWA, Beer Institute, and Brewers Association have been mum on the nakedly ideological dismantling of federal scientific infrastructure by Musk (at the not-Department of Government Efficiency), Russell Vought (Office of Management and Budget) and roadkill gourmand/HHS head honcho Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Constellation, late to every Big Beer trend, waited until earlier this month to follow Molson Coors in 86-ing its corporate diversity programs. Meanwhile, after notching some accolades for its Super Bowl spots, ABI got to work pulling sponsorships of Pride parades from San Francisco to St. Louis in a bid for the beer money of trans- and homophobes this past quarter. And its North American chief executive was trying to make jingoistic “fetch” happen by encouraging wholesalers and vendors to stop calling it “domestic beer” and start calling it “American beer.” Maybe Brendan Whitworth truly believes that’s a problem that needs solving, and not just another opportunity to cozy up to the nationalist right wing. But it was a swing and a miss with the woke pinkos of [checks notes; squints] Major League Baseball.
Subject: Craftology
Grade: C
Craft beer sales are down, and there’s no way to sugarcoat it. (Or milk-sugarcoat it, which used to work.) Virtually any national data from this past quarter tell a tough tale for the struggling segment, and the BA’s 2024 recap, which just arrived earlier this week, was more bad news, showing a projected 4 percent decline in production volume among its constituents compared to the prior year. Meanwhile, two of the top 10 BA-defined craft brewers — Tilray Brands and Monster Beverage Corporation — each closed more breweries in Q1 2025. The latter firm also took a big honking write-down on its CANarchy Craft Collective acquisition, just like Sapporo-Stone Brewing did on its Stone acquisition. If there’s a glimmer of hope, it’s that craft brewers seem to have fully accepted that there are no corporate white knights on the horizon, and the ego service of going it alone isn’t worth the heartbreak of going out of business. There has been a flurry of craft-brewing tie-ups and mergers these past few months, and smart operators are adapting to massive rent hikes by availing themselves of slack capacity nearby. The only way out is through, and portions of the segment are starting to really dig in.
Hop-ocalypse Now
As discussed in this column (and a few previous columns, too), Constellation Brands is in a tough spot. Whether you feel bad for the firm’s chief executive, Bill Newlands, is up to you. Whether he feels bad for the terrified Hispanic families all over the country who disproportionately bought Modelo and Corona until the Trump administration’s masked thugs started anti-constitutionally disappearing people off the street is up for debate. After all, as he told The Wall Street Journal last week, “If that consumer has concerns, issues, et cetera, that’s a big deal for us.” Whoa, Bill, dial it back there! Wouldn’t want you to overdo it on compassion.
Ups…
Congrats to Molson Coors’ chief executive Gavin Hattersley, who announced he’s retiring at the end of 2025… The Michael J. Jackson Foundation launched a new hop blend with John I. Haas, which has pledged $5 per pound sold to the 2024 VinePair Nonprofit of the Year… Fort Point Beer Co. and HenHouse Brewing Co. announced plans to merge into a 40,000-annual-barrel combined entity in California… Draft-selling machine Prost Brewing Co. announced a fifth location in Colorado…
…and downs
Constellation Brands got rid of its corporate diversity programs… Workers struck Manhattan Beer Distributors, claiming the wholesaler tried to bypass union negotiators to undermine their pension program… New Numerator data indicate a whopping 72 percent of shoppers are concerned about a Trump recession…
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