While the World Trade War led by US President Donald Trump continues, the provincial boycotts of American alcohols are starting to reflect in sales figures, in a context of third financial crisis in five years for Canadian consumers.
This text is a translation of an article by CTV News.
Available data shows a drop in sales of all alcohol categories this year compared to the same period in 2024, with a drop of more than $ 100 million in six provinces in the last quarter alone.
“Consumers feel very fragile,” said CJ Hélie, president of Berre Canada, a professional brewers’ association, during an interview on Thursday. “People reduce their discretionary expenses, and we see it very clearly. The market is really at half mast. ”
Provincial retailers who have ceased to buy American alcohol and removed bottles from their shelves at the start of the year, statistical Canada (statcan) data show that in April, around 3 million dollars of American wine entered the country, a drop of 94 % compared to the $ 54 million recorded in the same month in 2024.
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“We are deeply concerned about the fact that American customs duties on spirits imported from Canada and Mexico will considerably harm the three countries and lead a cycle of retaliatory customs duties which will have negative repercussions on our common industry,” we can read in a joint declaration of North American industrial groups in the spirits sector on the eve of the trade war in February.
“Our industries have prospered thanks to the equality of competition conditions established between our borders.”
While imports of American beer have experienced a less pronounced decline, they represent only a relatively low share of the Canadian market.
“In some cases, for generations, some of these emblematic American brands have been made in Canada,” Hélie explained to ctvnews.ca.
“Your Bud Lights, your Michelobs, your Pabs … They are made in Canada, almost all from Canadian cereals, in our factories.”
– CJ Hélie, President of BEAUR CANADA
Beer Canada said in a statement published in February that 88 % of the beer consumed throughout the country last year had been made in Canadian breweries.
Hélie explains that in the beer sector, the effects of the trade war are mainly felt in the manufacturing process, where customs duties on aluminum threaten to make the production of billions of cans filled with factories every year more expensive.
«[Les brasseurs] have seen it coming; They stored as much as they could, ”he argued. “We have not yet found an increase in beer prices on the market. But if you think of the Labor Day, this question is not resolved … It will be catastrophic for many brewers. ”
In addition, Canada has always been the world’s leading importer of American wines, representing about a third of the US export market last year. But for the month of April 2025, the data compiled by the American Association of Wine Economists show that this figure fell to only 4 %, after the highest drop in purchases among the 15 main American buyers.
At the other end of the chain, American wines represented one in five bottles (20 %) bought in the stores of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) at the beginning of 2024, but during the same period this year, this proportion fell to 15 %, making the United States lose their first place in terms of import sales.
“American wine companies thought that customs duty on imported products, including Canadian wine, would be a boon, but the opposite occurred,” said Karl Storchmann, executive director of the American Association of Wine Economists, in an interview with BNN Bloomberg last week.
“Canada pulled the carpet.”
Fall in sales across the country
The first figures show a drop in alcohol sales among provincial retailers.
The drops recorded in the first months of 2025 range from approximately one tenth percentage point in New Brunswick to 8 % in Newfoundland and Labrador.
In Quebec, the Régie des alcohols awarded the recent downward trend in sales, including a drop of $ 90 million during the last financial year in government and specialized stores, to “changes in customer purchasing habits”.
The latest figures come from the fourth quarter of the year 2024-2025, which varies according to the provinces, but which generally extends from January to March of this year.
Among the six provinces for which data is available, Nova Scotia is the only one to display a sales increase, even if the provincial management notes that the total volume sold is still decreasing by almost 2 % compared to last year and the previous year.
Since March, the province says it has stored around $ 14 million in American products instead of selling them, and sales of products made in Nova Scotia increased by almost 14 % during this period.
The Yukon Liquor Corporation said CTV News that US imports represented 3.6 % of net sales in the territory between January and May this year, compared to 5.4 % for the entire year 2024.
In British Columbia, where Prime Minister David Eby described his March decision to withdraw American products in response to “climbing threats from the south of the border”, net who wholesale American alcohol has dropped by 3 % for whiskey, 23 % for wine and almost 60 % for beer.
In addition, according to a press release sent by email by the Liquor Distribution Branch in the province, the months of April and May were marked by “an increased interest and demand for customers for products made in Canada”.
If American alcohols remain available in certain circumstances and imports have taken up in certain regions of the country, a 25 % customs right remains in force on wine, spirits and beer entering Canada.
Trade war is not the only factor behind the drop in alcohol sales. Statistics Canada notes that, per liter, they have been down for years, even before Trump’s return to the White House.
Between the 2019-2020 and 2023-2024 exercises, revenues from the sale of alcohol increased only by around 2 % per year on average, even though the price per bottle increased, notes the agency.
In volume, sales dropped by 3.8 % last year, which Statistics Canada qualified in a statement published in March as “historic” drop.
“This is the largest drop in volume ever recorded since Statistics Canada began to follow alcohol sales in 1949,” read the press release.
For Mr. Hélie, recent declines are a sign that consumers react to years of economic difficulties, from the massive fall in catering outside the home due to the restrictions linked to the COVVI-19 to the inflationary outbreak which followed the return of customers to restaurants, which he calls the “shock of menus”.
“I’m going to go from $ 80 to $ 95 (for an evening), but these $ 95 mean that I also have to give up dessert, coffee or additional beer,” he explains.
“We clearly see it in the figures.”
– with information from Jordan Fleguel for BNN Bloomberg.
