Your right to drink could be affected no matter who wins the presidential election

Since the repeal of Prohibition, few voters have focused on alcohol as a relevant issue in federal elections. But while most liquor regulations currently reside at the state and local level, the federal government can still play a significant role in the price, availability, and societal acceptance of our favorite beverages. This year’s presidential race may actually be the most significant federal alcohol election since Prohibition.

The alcohol industry suffered greatly from Donald Trump’s tariffs during his first term, with tariffs on aluminum rising the cost of beer cans— and in turn the cost of beer — as well as a trade war with Europe causing difficulties for whiskey distilleries. Europe responded with retaliatory tariffs on bourbon and other American whiskeys; America then he answered in kind with tariffs on Scotch and Irish whiskey and other European liquors. Given that the European market has become more and more important for United States whiskey companies, the tariffs ended up hurting the American whiskey industry far more than they helped it.

During the Biden administration, there was a step up de-escalation in the whiskey wars and aluminum tariffs. The Kamala Harris campaign took advantage of this by warning of the “Trump Tequila Tax” on imported alcohol that Americans can expect if Trump wins.

However, the Biden-Harris administration has been far from reliable on tariff policy, choosing to continue many tariffs Trump enacted instead of ending them. But given that tariffs have been a persistent hobby for Trump since he was pre-presidential daysthe American alcohol industry appears more in question about a second Trump presidency than the comparative one darkness of Harris’s tariff inclinations.

The winery sector fears another long-standing Trump policy priority: immigration. Trump’s restrictive stance on immigration could have severe repercussions for California’s wine industry, given its heavy reliance on immigrant labor from Mexico. At a time when many American wineries — and global wine markets in general — are struggling deeply, a job supply shock to the industry could further unsettle the wine world.

A potential Harris administration brings its own risks. Most importantly, the revision of the US Dietary Guidelines is scheduled it comes out in 2025and based on internal sourcesthe federal government leans toward declaring that “no amount of alcohol is acceptable for a healthy lifestyle.” This food guide would reflect recent ones proclamation of the World Health Organization that there is no “safe level” of alcohol and is drastically reducing recommended drinking levels in America. current guidelines— taking them from two drinks a day for men and one for women to zero.

The results of such a move could be disastrous, as not only are many Americans affected by the dietary rules, but it could also cause a wave of Tobacco-style class action lawsuits against the alcohol industry. Dietary guidelines are revised every five yearsand the review is led by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture. Under the Biden-Harris administration, these agencies made a mess of the process, using a little-known and secretive federal agency panel which should focus on underage drinking as a means of revising down the guidance on alcohol levels in adults.

Although Trump is a celebrity abstinenthis administration oversaw the revision of the 2020 guidelines, and ultimately the federal agencies leading the revisions decided to reject efforts to reduce drinking recommendations at that time. Given Trump’s populist working-class base, an alcohol industry commentator he pointed out the obvious political incentives at play: “It’s hard to imagine Donald Trump telling Kid Rock he’d better just have one Bud Light a day.”

A final area that could be affected by the presidential race is ongoing investigation by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) to determine whether there are anti-competitive or anti-trust concerns in the alcohol industry. The agency initiated the current review as part of many doubts about the Biden administration antitrust repression. It initially targeted concerns about producer level of the alcohol markets, the agency seemed to belatedly realize that to the extent that there are anticompetitive concerns in the alcohol business, they reside in the government-mandated state. middle level wholesale trade— a problem RISE by government involvement and is unlikely to be easily resolved by greater government intervention.

Despite some preliminaries speculation that Harris might prove less aggressive in antitrust enforcement than Biden, she approval of antitrust control in the food markets poured cold water on this hope. While a second Trump administration presents its own lack of clarity on how that would be antitrust approacha potential break in the current TTB machinations seems a bit more likely under Trump given deregulating accent in his first term.

Ultimately, putting all these various strands of politics together leads to one serious conclusion: Whoever wins on Tuesday, it’s shaping up to be a lose-lose election for Americans concerned about their lives, their liberty, and their libations.