Those who know me know that I do enjoy a nice glass of wine, especially red. I also work in the wine industry when I am not writing. That experience and my first hand witnessing of the industry’s steep decline prompted this Wine on Wednesday.
It’s fairly common knowledge that the wine industry is experiencing a bit of a hiccup and by hiccup I mean going from a 1.3 billion dollar business to a 850 million dollar business in the year and four-ish months since this current administration enacted its whack-a-doodle tariffs. We’ve watched as U.S. wine exports plummeted by 33.5% in 2025 following retaliatory trade tariffs and bans under the Trump administration. My company has been through three rounds of layoffs. They are privately held so not much is made public but when you are an employee and you see someone who’s been with the company twenty-three years pack up their desk, you know stuff just got real. It’s happened over and over again. Truly sad, even devastating and I’m only watching from the cheap seats.
Don’t get me wrong, the wine industry has been in the doldrums for years, just not to this extent. Baby Boomers are aging and not drinking as much, “doctor says to cut back,” “it interferes with <insert name of Rx here>,” that kind of thing. Then there’s the younger generations who aren’t drinking as much (it’s a spendy luxury and they have less discretionary cash than other generations). Lastly, there are lots of fun, attention grabbing new beverage options: hard teas, lemonades, seltzers and ciders to tempt shoppers, not to mention the growing acceptance of marijuana.
That all pales in comparison to what happened when Canada, who used to import 80% of America’s exported alcoholic beverages, pulled all US liquors off its shelves. OUCH. That was 20% of my company’s gross sales. Again, OUCH. Because hundreds of millions of dollars worth of wine could no longer be exported, inventory flooded back into the United States. This crowded retail shelves, tanked wholesale prices, and forced some California growers to leave grapes rotting on the vine or pull out thousands of acres of vineyards entirely. The trade wars have hiked the price of glass bottles, corks from Portugal, oak barrels from France, even label printing costs more. Checking online, an American winery has closed every day since the implementation of the tariffs, some days more than one. Out of roughly 6000+ wineries we’ve lost about 700, with plenty more teetering on the edge.
And while wine is my thing, it’s not just that elixir of the gods that is suffering. Jim Beam has paused production for the entirety of 2026 as their organization struggles to deal with the changing manufacturing landscape. Howard Miller, a historic clock and watch maker has closed its doors. Whirlpool, Alcoa, John Deere, and Stellantis are restructuring and laying off employees. Small coffee roasters and local sawmills are going under, as are farmers. On the flip side, many foreign companies have made the strategic decision that, for now at least, it’s not worth the trouble to deal with the chaos that is the US. Nintendo, Jaguar/Land Rover, Swiss watch companies, Razor (laptops), and Basic Fun (makers of Lincoln Logs, K’nex, Tonka Truck and Care Bears) are among those business skipping the circus of Trump policies. The winning continues!
In the meantime, please do a sister a solid and order a glass of wine. Thank you for your attention to this matter- EMG
MAKE AMERICA WINE AGAIN