By drink

The whole trade, in three numbers

Canada sent C$1.4 billion of alcohol to the United States in the year to March 2025, by Statistics Canada’s count.¹ On the American side, the US imported US$854 million of Canadian alcohol in 2025, which the Globe and Mail calculates is 87.6% of the value of everything the September 29 bans cover.² By drink, US Census Bureau data reported by CBC:³

Spirits and whisky

This is where the ban bites. Spirits Canada says about half of what Canadian distillers make is shipped to the United States, and that 93% of Canada’s spirits exports went there last year; its statement warns of limited ability to replace lost U.S. demand in the near term.⁷

Whisky and liqueurs have an exit the others lack. In containers over 4 litres they came off the 50% list on September 15 and are not in the ban. By Census figures reported in the Globe, bulk was the small part of the trade in 2025: about US$43 million of whisky against US$168 million in bottles, and US$3 million of liqueurs against US$384 million.^6,2 A large brand with a bottling plant in the United States can switch; Crown Royal already bottles its American whisky in Illinois.⁸ A trade lawyer told CBC that leaves the smaller, more independent shops that are more dependent on U.S. trade to feel it most.³

Two of them, on the record: Maverick Distillery sent 20 to 25% of its product to the United States and expects a year or two or three to make it up.⁷ Sons of Vancouver shipped a few pallets of wheated rye south each year, under 10% of its business.³

Wine and icewine

Canadian wine is mostly drunk in Canada; exports to the US were about C$8.3 million in 2025 by Wine Growers Canada’s count, 57% of it icewine.⁹ Its president puts it plainly: Sixty per cent of all exports to the U.S. are icewine, so it is a very important market, and 90% of the wine shipped south comes from Ontario.¹⁰ (US Census counts US$62.1 million of wine from Canada for the same year; the two measures differ.)³

For many estates the 50% already did the damage. There’s no product in the world that could compete in a marketplace with a tariff that high, said the viticulture director at Pillitteri Estates in Niagara-on-the-Lake, which shipped its icewine four months early to beat the ban.¹¹ In the Okanagan, Lightning Rock Winery expects to lose the roughly 500 cases a year it sold in the United States.¹²

Beer

Beer is the most domestic of Canadian drinks: 88.7% of the beer sold in Canada is Canadian.¹ Sales to the US were about C$28 million last year, most of them by Moosehead, the New Brunswick brewer, for whom the US is 15% of volume.² Beer has no practical bulk route; the ban covers the bottles, cans and kegs people buy, and Moosehead paid rush fees to get its last shipments across.¹³ A craft brewery that sold a few kegs over the border has lost that, and little else.

Cider, mead and fruit wine

These sit under heading 2206: cider, sparkling fruit wine, and the annex’s catch-all for fermented beverages (other than grape wine, beer, cider, prune wine, sake, vermouth or other effervescent wines), where mead and still fruit wines fall. All are banned when packaged.⁴ No one publishes export figures for them. What is known is that the makers are many and small: Cider Canada counts more than 400 cider producers, and cider was the one drink category whose Canadian sales grew in the year to March 2025.^14,1

Maple, for the record

Maple syrup is on none of the Section 338 lists. A maple spirit, a maple liqueur or a maple wine is alcohol, and is covered like any other.^15,4

Who is exposed, in one line

A Canadian maker who bottles in Canada and sold part of it in the United States: a craft distiller, an icewine estate, a cidery with an American importer. The large brands with bulk routes and American bottling are the least exposed. For the small ones, the Canadian market is the one they still have.

Where to find them

The directory’s Alcohol section lists Canadian makers by drink: whisky, other spirits, wine, icewine, beer, cider, mead and fruit wine. Rules on shipping alcohol direct to consumers differ by province, so a maker in another province may not be able to ship to you; check your own province’s rules, or look for the bottle at your liquor store.