With Trump’s Tariffs Still Flying, Teamsters Target Modelo With Pint-Glass Populism

Two and a half years ago, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters’ lead for the brewing industry said something that struck me as odd.

“Anheuser-Busch [InBev] is a worldwide brewer, and they certainly have the capacity to import and export,” Jeff Padellaro, director of the Teamsters’ Brewery, Bakery, and Soft Drink Conference, told Hop Take in a December 2023 interview about a potential strike that was then brewing over that firm’s collective bargaining agreement with its ~5,000 Teamster employees. “We want a commitment that the jobs are going to stay in the United States, on American soil, protecting the people who have made Anheuser-Busch the industry leader that it is.”

There’s no doubt that ABI has a global footprint. Its far-flung operations, in fact, were no small part of the reason it was able to weather the Bud Light fiasco in the United States that had touched off some nine months prior to that interview without ever really taking meaningful losses as a corporation. But contra the Teamsters’ concern, it seemed unlikely to me that ABI would try to outsource American brewing jobs to countries with lower labor costs and standards.

For one thing, while neither Republicans nor Democrats have been good friends to the labor movement in the modern era, the politics of such a move are extremely challenging, bordering on radioactive. (Carlos Brito, in a successful gambit to drag InBev’s hostile takeover over the finish line in 2008, publicly promised Missouri’s senators that he wouldn’t close any of the company’s 12 domestic mega-plants, much less relocate them abroad. Ah, memories.) For another thing, beer is heavy and perishable, two immutable characteristics that make shipping the stuff expensive on a unit basis and complicate — if not negate — margin improvements. Which brings us to the third reason I was dubious of the Teamsters’ offshoring anxieties: ABI had already made the opposite move, onshoring production of Stella Artois sold in the U.S. in 2021. Molson Coors and Sapporo have followed suit in the years since with Peroni and Sapporo Premium, respectively. While brewery workers in those brands’ countries of origin may have lost work, their American counterparts stood to gain it. As one of the largest unions in North America, the trend is flowing toward the Teamsters — not away from them.

Lately, Teamsters have decided to press that advantage, flipping Padellaro’s fear into a policy goal. “We can brew Modelo beer. It’s the same recipe. Let’s brew it in the United States,” Sean O’Brien, the Teamsters’ president, said in an interview with Fox News last week to promote the union’s campaign to persuade the Trump administration to levy a 75 percent tax on Mexican beer. “I’m pro-America, pro-American worker, pro-American jobs. So if there’s an opportunity to tariff Mexican beer in this situation, which is gonna provide opportunity for our current members, which we have tens of thousands in the brewery and distribution industry, then I’m all for tariffs and all for keeping American jobs in America.”

The Teamsters declined to make O’Brien or Padellaro available for an interview for this piece, citing scheduling issues.

There’s a lot going on here, not least the fact that O’Brien chose to make his case on Fox News, the house organ of the American anti-labor right wing’s corporate faction. (If you’re confused by the top Teamster’s seemingly self-defeating political orientation, well, you’re not the only one.) But set the political economy aside for the moment, and let’s consider the campaign on merit. The Teamsters first laid out their argument for a tariff on Mexican beer in filings with the United States Trade Representative (USTR) earlier this year, arguing that the tax was necessary to “level the playing field for American brewery workers.”

You can read the filings in full right here. For the sake of expedience: The Teamsters contend that Mexico has used tax policy to artificially incentivize the production of beer earmarked for export, “flooding export markets like the United States, to the detriment to the U.S. beer industry and its U.S. workers,” and that this is bad because it entrenches a Mexican beer industry that bears “the hallmarks of long-term wage suppression” and undermines the competitiveness of American-brewed brands, which “typically compete directly in the beer segment” with their Mexican counterparts.

It won’t surprise you to learn that Constellation Brands, which has risen to its spot as the United States’ third-largest macrobrewer by volume thanks entirely to the fact that it holds the license to sell Modelo and Corona in the United States, does not agree with the Teamsters’ analysis. “[T]he success of our beer business has provided significant benefits to American workers across our extensive distributor network, thousands of retailers across the country, the agricultural sector, the logistics and transportation industry, marketing and advertising agencies, and our own U.S. workforce,” the company said in an emailed statement to Hop Take, citing a May 2026 white paper from the right-wing think tank Unleash Prosperity (UP), claiming that “74 percent of the economic value associated with imported Mexican beer flows to U.S. workers and businesses.”

Constellation did not respond to inquiries whether it had recently made donations to UP, or coordinated the study with the think tank, which does not appear to have previously focused its policy proposals on the beer industry. (A footnote in the paper says the brewer “provided” key data to calculate that 74 percent figure.) The 501(c)(3) does not list contact information on its website; a voicemail left at the number listed on its most recently available Form 990 was not immediately returned.

The Teamsters’ motivation in trying to drag the production of Modelo et al. over the border is fairly straightforward. The union does not organize workers in Mexico, and while it may have solidaristic reasons for lamenting low Mexican wages, it has a direct financial interest in shifting that labor to American breweries, where workers can be recruited as card-carrying, dues-paying Teamsters. (Union busters like to portray this dynamic as nefarious, which it isn’t — paying money for services is a pretty standard practice, and unions provide a demonstrable, quantifiable service of winning workers bigger shares of their own productivity — but it is real.)

Constellation’s own motivation is equally obvious: It has poured billions of dollars of investment into its Mexican mega-breweries, and until the second Trump administration began wreaking havoc on both its Hispanic customer base and the political viability of its international supply chain, it had a very good thing going. You could imagine executives at ABI, which divested Grupo Modelo’s brand licenses in the U.S. to Constellation in 2013 to obtain a consent decree for the merger from the Department of Justice, being amused by the Teamsters’ O’Brien turning his propensity for public antagonism upon a rival, if only because it means he’s not focused on them at the moment. (ABI did not respond to a request for comment.) But this is not 5D chess.

There are three points of interest here. The first is what that consent decree says — or doesn’t say — about whether Modelo sold in the U.S. could legally be brewed in the U.S. The authors of UP’s study claim that Constellation “operates under a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice that requires the Modelo, Corona and Pacifico brands to be made in Mexico” at its Piedras Negras plant. That stipulation appears nowhere in the actual judgment, though it is gestured at in the proposed sale agreement and a concurrent financial disclosure from Constellation. The final sale agreement is meant to be attached to the final judgment, but is not. Constellation did not respond to requests to provide that document and clarify whether it believed the consent decree prohibited it from moving Modelo’s production to the U.S.

Secondly, there’s the think tank’s claim that American drinkers would reject Modelo if they found out it was brewed stateside. “[C]onsumers often use country of origin as a signal of quality and prestige,” UP’s co-authors wrote, citing a class-action lawsuit that ABI settled over American-brewed Beck’s in 2015. “Consumers’ reaction in the Beck’s case has ominous implications for any Mexican beer that moved production to the U.S. Consumer confidence would be degraded along with brand value.” But that contention ignores the more recent example of American-made Stella, whose stateside shift, Rabobank analysts found in a 2023 case study, “was well communicated” and thus provoked no meaningful impact on its sales. It’s true that the American drinking public used to care more about the actual provenance of beers pitching foreign heritage; there’s little evidence that this holds true today. I think the Teamsters’ claim that Modelo competes “directly” with American-brewed beers is also a bit overblown; it’s a differentiated product from, say, Michelob Ultra, its rival atop U.S. sales charts. But Unleash Prosperity’s insistence that the brand’s Mexican essence is an inviolable part of its success just doesn’t rate.

Finally, return to the politics of it all. The Teamsters’ leverage here does not turn on facts and figures. The Trump administration’s economic doctrine, to the extent that it exists beyond “do graft,” is predicated on an aggrieved faux-populism that has American workers losing salaries and status to foreign workers, whether on American soil or across international borders. This is not really true, but it is really compelling to the MAGA base. Can the Teamsters harness Trump’s destructive regime of retaliatory tariffs for its own benefit? Or will its appeals to the historically unpopular president tie the union closer to his legacy of racist violence and open corruption? Maybe both, and maybe neither. But yet again, the second Trump administration has brought together some odd barfellows.

🤯 Hop-ocalypse Now

Brewers have spent the first half of 2026 adjusting to the economic wreckage of Trump’s tariff blitz in 2025, some of which was stayed in February by the Supreme Court. But this past week, the president abruptly announced a new 50 percent levy on many Canadian goods “regardless of whether a good originates under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement,” the agreement he himself signed during his first term, and has spent the first half of his second term trying to tank. The White House said in a release that the move is meant to “level the playing field for crucial American exports” like “alcohol,” but given Canada’s crucial role in American brewers’ supply chains for inputs like aluminum and barley, and the sheer decimation of demand for American alcoholic beverages north of the border, that outcome seems… ah… unlikely.

📈 Ups…

The Brewers Association’s midyear survey has 54 percent of respondents reporting growth, up from 49 percent last year… After closing in the wake of the Trump administration’s onslaught on the Twin Cities earlier this year, Bauhaus Brew Labs is reopening under the ownership of a longtime partner… Another week, another legislative proposal to avert the Trump administration’s looming THC ban, this time from bipartisan lawmakers in Kentucky and Minnesota… Goose Island Brewing Co. announced the 2026 lineup for its Bourbon County Brand Stout series, if you even care…

📉 …and downs

The Trump administration announced plans for a new 50 percent tariff on Canadian goods, including alcohol, which should do wonders for American brewers’ already strained barley and aluminum budgets… Ballast Point Brewing is on the verge of “operational collapse,” a new lawsuit from board members alleges… IWSR’s latest report “conclusively debunked” the mainstream narrative that Zoomers aren’t drinking, so there goes that excuse…

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