Bourbon’s Global Soft Power Is Fading as Trump Tariffs Reshape the Industry

Bourbon is facing a crisis of global proportions. Its domestic outlook is dim, as sales recede amid consumption declines and a serious oversupply problem. But internationally, the picture is downright bleak: According to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, American whiskey exports cratered by 19 percent in 2025, due in large part to declines of 57 percent in Canada, 35 percent in the European Union, and 28 percent in Japan — three of the largest markets. Other areas saw a rise in exports, but it was not nearly enough to offset the losses.

The widespread boycott of American spirits throughout Canada explains some of the decline. It can also be partly attributed to European importers loading up on bourbon in late 2024, anticipating tariffs that were slated to come into effect in 2025 and are currently set for elimination pending ratification by the European Parliament. But there’s more to the picture, according to distillers and industry observers.

“There is absolutely no movement in our EU market,” says Thomas Bard, co-founder and CEO of Kentucky’s Bard Distillery, whose Canadian business has also been nearly wiped out. “Due to the continued volatility regarding tariffs and other geopolitical ‘disagreements,’ there seems to be no appetite for European importers to bother with, or take chances on, bringing in small craft spirits to their country.” Current economic conditions, Bard adds, are too unpredictable and tensions are high. “For all intents and purposes, that market is dead to us and we’ll have to start again from scratch at some point in the future.”

Rawnica Dillingham, chief sales officer at New Riff Distillery, says that the Canadian boycott hurt the business’s bottom line and prompted a change in strategy. “When we lost Canada, that’s when I started aggressively pursuing some of these other export markets to make up some of that volume,” she says. New Riff is now investing more in markets like Australia, South Korea, and the EU.

Export trouble started back in the first Trump administration, when tit-for-tat trade spats saw both the EU and U.K. impose heavy tariffs on American whiskey, while the U.S. levied its own on Scotch and other products. But it’s not just tariffs — nor other hard factors like inflation, demographic changes, or the recent spike in oil prices due to the war in Iran — that are hitting bourbon sales. There’s a more subtle dynamic, precipitated by the current administration’s aggression towards international markets and allies, playing out within the sphere of bourbon’s soft power as an American product.

“Soft power is the cultural pull of a country, the desirability of its lifestyle, or just the emotional association that people project onto products of a place,” says Olivier Ward, a U.K.-based consultant and founder of Everglow Spirits. “Bourbon has always traded off that. There is a definite reality that bourbon is both cultural and very much linked to America” with associated values like freedom and rebellion. “Those associations have helped justify some of bourbon’s premium pricing and desirability.”

Ward explains that soft power can work in either direction, making a product more or less appealing. The latter is starting to happen with bourbon in the U.K. and EU in subtle ways, rather than via an all-out boycott as has occurred in Canada. “That rejection, or at least the feeling of rejection, is friction,” Ward says. “That’s disastrous when you’re already facing all of the hard-power problems” like tariffs, inflation, and the like. “The last thing [bourbon producers] need right now is the consumer hesitating about the appeal of the product.”

“There is absolutely no movement in our EU market. Due to the continued volatility regarding tariffs and other geopolitical ‘disagreements,’ there seems to be no appetite for European importers to bother with, or take chances on, bringing in small craft spirits to their country.”

Soft Nationalism

Andrea Fujarczuk, a distiller and professor at Niagara University, is doing doctoral research into the association between brand and place among whiskey consumers. She says that bourbon’s identity abroad is changing because of its associations with current American policies and actions.

“The one thing that no one is really talking about is the inherent risk that is now associated with bourbon — that political factor,” Fujarczuk says. “Now consumers are looking at purchasing a bottle of bourbon as a risk, not because of the quality of it, but because of the political association.”

Marketers often point to the halo effect, when a product, brand, or place with a well-respected reputation lifts others by dint of positive association; think German engineering or Italian leather. Fujarczuk notes that there’s an opposite to this phenomenon: the horn effect. “That’s when there is a poor association with something — what could have happened in terms of that political association,” she explains. “Can you turn that around? Yes, but you may not be able to undo all the damage already done.”

Both Fujarczuk and Mark Jennings, a consultant and whisky writer based in Sweden, point out that the current political environment — with President Trump upending trade agreements, making threats against allies, and trying to strong-arm other countries into geopolitical conflicts — feels personal to many people abroad. Those emotions are beginning to play out in their buying habits.

“What I’m noticing in Germany, Sweden, and the Nordics is people are just not renewing their purchase of bourbon unless they absolutely have to. They’re choosing something else,” Jennings says. “There’s a lot of, let’s say, soft nationalism that’s coming in.” He notes that bourbon’s pricing, which has risen markedly in recent years, may be factoring into this, but also says that locally made whiskies are gaining more attention and support.

“Consumers are being more conscious of where they’re putting their hard-earned money and that includes where products are coming from,” Fujarczuk says. “People are intentionally buying local and national products. This global trade war is incentivizing people to become even more ethnocentric. The longer it happens, the more likely they will be to continue doing that.”

Ambivalent Attitudes

These trends are playing out in markets that were once seen as ripe for American whiskey, but haven’t been fully developed. Over the past two decades, as the domestic market boomed, most bourbon companies largely kept their focus there. Now, just as sales cool domestically, the opportunity for building international sales is growing more remote, with some consumers deliberately pulling away and others simply ambivalent.

“It’s been an uphill battle to bring American whiskey to other marketplaces,” says Dave Schmier, founder of Proof and Wood. “In a lot of markets, with some exceptions, American whiskey isn’t yet a thing. People aren’t missing it.”

Schmier has considered export opportunities in markets like Singapore, but says that “there’s no clamoring for American whiskey” there. “Taking that into account and then throwing some of the negativity that the country has projected over the last year makes it that much more challenging,” he says. Rather than pushing against headwinds to export, Schmier is currently focused on “regrouping” Proof and Wood’s U.S. business.

“The one thing that no one is really talking about is the inherent risk that is now associated with bourbon — that political factor. Now consumers are looking at purchasing a bottle of bourbon as a risk, not because of the quality of it, but because of the political association.”

At U.K.-based retailer The Whisky Exchange, commercial buying director Dawn Davies notes that bourbon sales are steady but not growing, a change from trends she was seeing before 2025. “It’s probably the loyal drinkers who keep on drinking — they know they like it, they’re going to keep buying it, whereas before we were seeing a much stronger growth trajectory on American whiskey,” she says. Compared to mainland Europe, she adds, the U.K. market “will probably be more resilient in its ambivalence [rather than negativity] towards bourbon” due to the country’s “special relationship” with the United States.

Although there’s no current data to support it as a widespread trend, anecdotally, some international whiskey tourists are choosing not to travel to the U.S. Jennings, for example, has often visited to judge spirits competitions and do other work, as well as on vacations, but he’s halted future plans as a way of showing his opposition to the policies of the Trump administration.

“That has meant me declining articles and opportunities. It has a financial impact to the work that I do, and a personal impact,” he says, acknowledging that his one-man stance is small. Still, he notes, “You have to make a stand at some point.”

Collective Opportunity

No matter the reasons for bourbon’s international decline — and it may be years before they are fully understood — the fact that its reputation is changing can be regarded as an opportunity rather than a blow. Dillingham says that New Riff’s conversations about strategy are focusing less on bourbon as the “spirit of America” and more on integrating into the unique culture of a particular market. “We have to be the brand that comes back to why we drink bourbon in the first place,” she says. “That isn’t as a way to take American culture and put it into other cultures. It’s a way to take a great spirit and drive community around it wherever that community is.”

Davies hopes to see more investment from bourbon companies into developing a “boots-on-the-ground” strategy that incorporates the views of U.K. consumers. “Those that engage with the market, go out of their comfort zone, and think about how they engage the new consumer in a very different way — they’re the ones that will probably win the war,” she says, noting that it will help if the industry comes together to present a united front.

Fujarczuk agrees that combined forces, and a deliberate political adjustment, would benefit the industry as a whole. “When it comes down to the collective reputation of bourbon, no one individual distillery can really shift that,” she says. “That has to be something that comes from a group of people. There has to be an agreement and uniformity. The most important thing is to uncouple themselves from politics.”

It won’t be a short or easy process. “Soft power doesn’t fade overnight and it doesn’t come back immediately,” Ward says. “Cultural perception takes a really long time to rebuild. You can fix pricing and all that kind of stuff, … but the well has been well and truly poisoned for a lot of people around the world.” Bourbon producers, he notes, should be questioning what kind of identity and marketing will resonate with international consumers in this landscape, and responding in kind. The well-worn tropes of Americana are not likely to work as well as they once did.

Whatever the future course, Jennings believes that there will be European drinkers ready to embrace bourbon, again or for the first time. “It’s going to require some bridge building and some good faith,” he says. “But the door is always open.”

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