The day after President Donald Trump imposed 25% tariffs on nearly all goods from Mexico and Canada, Jay Southwood shared a few paragraphs to Facebook explaining how the levies would impact his industry: craft brewing. Then, he got his five seconds of internet fame.
“Let me be crystal clear,” Southwood began his post, shared on Feb. 2. “These Trump tariffs will be an absolute disaster for the beer industry. Doesn’t matter if you voted for him or not, this is a fact.”
Over the next day, the Massachusetts brewer’s assessment of how tariffs could impact independent American beer was reposted about 150 times by friends, family and strangers. It was shared by some Canadian brewers and at least one Dutch beer enthusiast, inspiring some debate about Trump’s policies along the way. Mostly, Southwood heard from fellow domestic beer makers who echoed his concerns.
“It just seems so cavalier,” Southwood, who opened Break Rock Brewing Co. in Quincy, MA in 2022, said of Trump’s tariffs. “It’s creating all this chaos and confusion. We don’t know what to expect, and we face enough challenges as small businesses as it is.”
Craft brewers across the country—who brew their beer in steel, can it in aluminum, and use barley malted in Canada to make it—are bracing to feel the pinch of tariffs and the on-again, off-again trade wars that have marked the start of Trump’s second term. The levies come at a difficult time for the once-booming industry, which is slowing down after years of breakneck growth as beer consumption declines.
“A lot of these craft breweries are small business owners, so their margins are quite small,” said Douglass Miller, a senior lecturer at the Nolan School of Hotel Administration. “It hampers their ability to plan, because they just don’t know who, what, when and how these tariffs are going to impact them.”
Steel and aluminum are integral to beer production, making the industry especially vulnerable to Trump’s blanket tariffs of 25% on both metals. The beverage is brewed in steel tanks, then sold to consumers either through steel kegs that enable draft pours, or via glass bottles and cans. According to the Brewers’ Association, aluminum cans accounted for around 75% of packaged craft beer’s volume and revenue in early 2025 sales data.
While beverage giants like Coca-Cola can increase their use of bottles if tariffs raise the cost of canning, independent brewers are unlikely to have that option. Unlike large corporations, small breweries that distribute their product usually only have the machinery for one packaging method.
“Any kind of packaging is going to be one of the biggest expenses a brewery can invest in,” said Caroline Wallace, executive director of the Texas Craft Brewers Guild. “It’s very expensive equipment. You can’t necessarily just retrofit a canning line into a bottling line.”
Along with metal tariffs, beer professionals are keeping a close eye on Trump’s trade war with Canada. In addition to being the largest supplier of both steel and aluminum to the U.S., Canada provides malted barley—an essential ingredient in most beers—to American brewers. In 2023, the U.S. imported $228 million in malt from Canada, accounting for almost 75% of all malt imports that year.
A sizable chunk of the barley that gets malted in Canada is grown in the U.S., so it could be “getting a hit both ways,” said Paul Leone, executive director of the New York State Brewers Association.
In early March, Trump implemented sweeping tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods. He quickly walked them back, but has pledged a separate round of tariffs on April 2. Canada has responded with its own tariffs targeting billions of dollars worth of American goods, and has threatened to retaliate again if Trump raises the levies.
Further retaliation from Canada, combined with the boycotts of American-made goods taking place across the country, could hurt U.S. brewers even more: Canada accounts for over 37% of American craft beer exports, per the Brewers’ Association, making it the industry’s largest export market.
The trade war arrives at a challenging time for American craft brewing. Following decades of rapid growth, the market has begun to cool: Last year, 335 craft breweries opened and 399 closed, according to the Brewers’ Association, with approximately 9,800 breweries currently in operation.
The slowdown is partly due to pandemic-era lockdowns and supply-chain challenges, and partly because the industry has matured, said Bob Galligan, director of government and industry relations at the Minnesota Craft Brewers Guild.
When Christopher Sanzeni opened Broken Symmetry inside an old Bethel, CT train station seven years ago, he witnessed the craft beer boom firsthand. “Everyone was super into breweries, they’re brewery hopping,” Sanzeni said. Then came COVID-19. To survive, the brewery pivoted from taproom sales to canned beer, packaged by a mobile canning company. The brewery stayed afloat, but as the pandemic’s fog settled, another issue emerged: Beer sales started to drop.
In 2024, U.S. beer consumption hit a 40-year low, Bart Watson, chief economist at the Brewers’ Association, told USA Today. Beer sales have been declining for years, as alternatives like hard seltzers and ready-to-drink cocktails have hit the market. Some consumers forgo alcohol entirely: Americans increasingly view alcohol consumption as unhealthy, according to a 2024 Gallup poll, which also found that Gen-Z and millennials are drinking less than previous generations.
Now, with tariffs poised to raise their costs, brewers worry that the beer consumers still out there won’t be willing to pay higher prices for craft beer, which tends to be pricier than name brands. Americans of all generations are spending tepidly, recent retail sales data indicates.
“I don’t know how much more we can realistically raise a seven or eight dollar pint for people to follow us on that journey,” said Rachel Diamond, executive director of the Connecticut Brewers Guild and the brand manager at Broken Symmetry.
Since the start of 2025, at least seven Connecticut breweries have closed, according to the guild director. “It’s a very close knit community, and we’re kind of watching it crumble,” Diamond said. “To have these tariffs in place on top of that, it’s really just a kick in the teeth.”
For now, Broken Symmetry is hanging on. They have a popular brunch service—although skyrocketing egg prices have been difficult to keep up with. “You’re always strategizing,” Sanzeni, who sold his house and liquidated retirement funds to open Broken Symmetry in 2018, said. “There’s tough days, when you’re like, ‘Man, I really miss that house I had.’”
At Break Rock Brewing, Southwood has started to see his prediction about the impact of tariffs on his industry take shape. His malt and can suppliers have told him that they have a decent amount of inventory, but once they run out, they’ll be forced to increase their prices.
“It’s just the way the world works, right?” Southwood said. ”It’s just a matter of when. Maybe they have a two month supply or a six month supply, but it’s gonna hit us. It’s gonna hit all of us.”