Trump's trade war is coming for your beer


Cracking open a cold one with the boys is in jeopardy thanks to President Trump's impending "good and easy to win" trade war. While canned beer might not be on the mind of the teetotaler-in-chief, his aluminum tariff "would amount to a $347.7 million tax on beverages served in cans and result in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs," The Wall Street Journal writes based on research by the Beer Institute.
The price of aluminum for cans is about 5 cents to every dollar worth of beer produced in the country, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports, noting that those nickels add up quickly when you're talking about $55 billion worth of beer produced annually. More than half of the beer sold in the U.S. comes in an aluminum can or bottle.
"The fallout from these tariffs could be tremendous, including rising prices, layoffs, and beer coming in plastic bags like Canadian milk," GQ writes.
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Other products could potentially become more expensive under Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs, including cars, baseball bats, Hershey Kisses, and MacBook computers, CNN and MarketWatch report.
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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.
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