How America Ruined Its Enviable Position in Global Drinks Culture
Recently, Catoctin Creek Distillery was about to close two new distribution deals that would bring its award-winning rye whiskeys to customers in Quebec and France. With craft spirits and other small businesses facing big headwinds, new exports could have provided the award-winning Virginia producer with a welcome lift. But both deals suddenly fell apart, explains Scott Harris, who co-founded the distillery with his wife Becky Harris in 2009.
“Our French distributor told us, ‘No, thanks, see you later — there’s no market for you now in this country,’” he says. “We’ve had Canadians tell us, ‘No, thank you,’ because of all the foolish talk that our administration has made towards Canada.”
Considering the prestige that American spirits and other aspects of our country’s drinks industry have enjoyed around the world, it sounds like an unnecessary own-goal. For over a century, the U.S. has held an enviable position, almost universally admired as the home of cocktail culture and the inspiration for dozens of “American bars” that appeared across Europe, to say nothing of craft beer and the third-wave coffee movement. In the global drinks industry, America has long been its own, very powerful brand, with the type of cachet and status other nations have spent billions trying to emulate.
But now America seems to be destroying that status.
Three months into a new presidential administration and U.S. spirits have been taken off the shelves in Canada, our country’s single largest export market. Those same bottles face the threat of renewed tariffs in the E.U., the world’s largest trading bloc, where sales had grown by 60 percent from 2021 to a total of $699 million last year. International bartenders who once looked enviously at the cocktail culture and big bartending events in the U.S. are rethinking their plans to travel here.
In the world of drinks, will America — as a brand — survive?
Another Round of Tariffs
The recent tariff trouble comes as a second helping for Catoctin Creek, as Harris described in a recent Bluesky thread about the distillery’s struggles under the first and second Trump administrations. About 10 years ago, the company started its initial exports to Europe, riding a new wave of interest in mixed drinks inspired by the U.S. cocktail renaissance.
“We were building a nice business, rapidly, selling authentic American products — rye whiskey in our case — that fit right into that culture boom, landing in nice cocktail bars in Berlin and other places in Europe,” Harris says.
That early success with exports was cut short by a trade war in 2018, during which the first Trump administration placed tariffs on European aluminum and steel, after which the E.U. responded by targeting American whiskey. At the time, the resulting drop in sales was merely about the price.
“It didn’t sour the Europeans on American products. There wasn’t any anti-Americanism that I perceived,” Harris says. “My customers still liked it; they just couldn’t afford it.”
“The whole time, people were just asking me, ‘What’s going on? Are tariffs going to ruin our lives?’ They were looking to me for information. It’s not like we have any more information than them.”
This time feels different, he says, in part because of the tone coming out of Washington. There’s also the confusion of new tariffs that have been announced, then dropped, and then reinstated, with exceptions for certain products declared by one U.S. official, countermanded by another, then proposed as likely again, though not for sure, by someone else.
“The seesaw that’s just ripping us back and forth, the whole environment is just so chaotic, and in some cases, bellicose,” he says. “The language coming out of the American administration is so hateful. And I don’t use that word lightly, but it’s now truly building some anti-Americanism.”
For now, American whiskey exports have been spared from reciprocal E.U. tariffs, with U.S. distillers breathing a sigh of relief.
But beyond the flagging exports, there’s another downside, especially for producers that count on tourism: Far fewer travelers are coming to the U.S. this year from Canada, which remains our country’s largest source of international visitors by far, as well as fewer travelers from other countries. Tourism Economics, a data company, now predicts a 9.4 percent drop in all international travel to the U.S. this year, led by a 20.2 percent drop in Canadian travelers, which should add up to an estimated total loss of $9 billion in travel spending in the U.S. in 2025. Popular wine regions, legendary distillery trails, and cities on craft beer bucket lists are all likely to feel those losses.
To take one example, international visitors to Kentucky — home of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail — directly spent $203 million in the state in 2023, according to the Kentucky Department of Tourism, the most recent year for which data is available. Taking 9.4 percent off the top gets you an instant reduction of more than $19 million in local spending.
Even worse? Tourism Economics expects these losses to last for four full years.
“This updated outlook represents a substantial setback, with the full recovery of international visits to the U.S. pushed out to 2029,” it announced.
Would-Be Visitors Look Elsewhere
Distillers unable to sell abroad and travel destinations getting fewer visitors are commercial aspects of U.S. drinks culture. When you start talking to bartenders, it gets a lot more personal.
Mandy Naglich, author of “How to Taste: A Guide to Discovering Flavor and Savoring Life,” recently returned to the U.S. after a multi-week, cocktail-focused trip across Europe, where the bartenders she met had questions.
“The whole time, people were just asking me, ‘What’s going on? Are tariffs going to ruin our lives?’” she says. “They were looking to me for information. It’s not like we have any more information than them.”
Some of those questions are financial. Will spirits brands still sponsor guest shifts and other special events, when those brands are no longer available in that country?
“Everybody is scared. What happens if I don’t declare this product and they catch me with it? Are they going to revoke my visa?”
More serious, of course, are questions about security. The U.K. has issued a travel warning for its citizens heading to the U.S., as have Germany and several other longtime allies, following a number of incidents at the border, including detentions of foreign travelers. Those incidents have many international bartenders rethinking their plans to travel to the U.S. for events like Tales of the Cocktail and Bar Convent Brooklyn. They also concern American bartenders working outside the country, including one industry consultant in the U.K. who asked to obscure her identity to avoid targeting and harassment. (Several sources in this article are similarly anonymous or identified only by first names.)
“I have a couple of opportunities to collaborate with bartenders from around the world, and I don’t know if it’s safe for me to bring them into the U.S.,” she says.
That’s an even more pressing issue for the LGBTQ+ community, with several countries recently warning trans citizens considering travel to the U.S., as CNN has reported. Those complications are making bartenders around the world look at the U.S. differently, especially compared to its status in years past.
“At one point, everybody wanted to come over and be a bartender in New York,” she says. “Some of the conversations I [now] have with bartenders are, ‘I was really trying to get to New York, because I figured that would be an amazing experience, but now I’m going to look at another place.’”
A Lasting Impact
International bartenders already working in the U.S. say that they hear the same from colleagues back home. Originally from Central America, Juan works in the Midwest, maintaining close contact with bar staff in a number of Spanish-speaking countries.
“Everybody is scared,” he says. In particular, bartenders he knows are growing more cautious about bringing in unusual bottles, even for non-commercial events where the goal is simply to share information and network. “What happens if I don’t declare this product and they catch me with it? Are they going to revoke my visa?” he says.
One Canadian bartender who also asked to be kept anonymous noted that while not everyone feels the same way, there is a sense of “allegiance” in Canada not to cross the border now.
Bartenders cite networking and professional growth as some of the biggest attractions of international travel. A bartender in the U.S. for the last nine years, Rodrigo still stays in contact with colleagues in his homeland and throughout Latin America, many of whom are questioning or canceling long-planned trips to the States. On a recent trip visiting high-profile bars in Spain, everyone wanted to know what was going on in his adopted country.
“They were like, ‘Yeah, we are very excited about Tales of the Cocktail, but we don’t know, we are afraid,’” he says. “It’s not just Central America, or South America, or Mexican people. It’s been a lot of nationalities that have had issues or that have gotten detained.”
America’s neighbors to the north have probably taken the most notice. Jessica Blaine Smith created Bartender Atlas and the Toronto Cocktail Conference with her husband Josh Lindley. Both are wondering if they can attend stateside conferences in good conscience.
“I understand that I have a lot of privilege, and I think what concerns me the most is that people in other communities are being affected more,” she says. “I feel a bit hesitant about the fact that maybe this is not inclusive for everyone. We have heard a lot of people are really reconsidering going. I think that they’re reconsidering it just because of the safety of it.”
Safety is one aspect, politics another. One Canadian bartender who also asked to be kept anonymous noted that while not everyone feels the same way, there is a sense of “allegiance” in Canada not to cross the border now. That comes in sharp contrast to the way most Canadians have felt for years about the U.S. “It’s part of the culture to want to travel to these places,” he says. “Going to the bars in New York City and in L.A. has always been fun, getaway-wise, because it’s just so close.”
That feeling might take a while to return. For generations, people in Canada and other countries have admired various aspects of America’s drinks culture. But the language and actions from Washington have made people justifiably angry, Harris says.
“If you could just turn it all off and start over tomorrow, I think there’s still damage that’s been done,” he says. “I think that we may lose a generation of drinkers in Canada because of that.”
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