On November 1, 2021, Andy Barr put out a press release with the headline "Barr Toasts to Suspension of EU Tariffs on American Distillers." He'd organized a bipartisan letter with more than forty members of Congress asking the administration to get the European Union's tariffs on American whiskey lifted. When it happened, he took the win:

"As Co-Chair of the Congressional Bourbon Caucus, I led multiple letters to both the Trump and Biden Administrations pushing for the full removal of these tariffs. I will always be an advocate for enhanced access to international markets for our distillers, so that they can provide Kentucky spirits and the world's best bourbon to countries across the globe."

Eric Gregory, president of the Kentucky Distillers' Association, was quoted in that same press release: "Representative Barr is a steadfast supporter of our industry and we are grateful to have him on the frontlines fighting for Kentucky distillers."

Four and a half years later, the tariffs are back, they're worse, and Barr is on the other side.

What the tariffs have done to Kentucky bourbon

The numbers come from the Kentucky Distillers' Association's own economic impact report, covered by WKMS in February 2026:

• Kentucky spirits exports were down 12% from January through October 2025 compared with the year before.
• Exports to Canada — the industry's biggest foreign market — fell 42%. Canada put a 25% tariff on American liquor in March 2025 in response to Trump's tariffs, and most Canadian provinces pulled American alcohol off the shelves entirely.
• Exports to the European Union fell 13%.

Then it stopped being about numbers on a page. Jim Beam paused whiskey production at its main Clermont facility for all of 2026. Bulleit's parent company had already halted production for a few months at its Lebanon site in 2025.

Kentucky distilling is a $10.6 billion industry, up from $1.8 billion in 2012, and Kentucky accounts for more than a quarter of everybody working in distilled spirits in the United States. When Clermont goes quiet, it isn't just Jim Beam. As Gregory put it: "That's not just going to impact distilleries. That's going to impact a lot of supply chain jobs down the line."

That's coopers, corn farmers, truckers, bottlers, and the small towns built around a rickhouse.

Barr's answer: "short-term turbulence"

In April 2025, with Canadian provinces already clearing American bourbon off their shelves, Barr was asked about the tariffs at an event in Kentucky. He told Spectrum News 1:

"My message is that for short-term turbulence with the tariffs, in the long-term, this is the policy that is good for distillers."

He added that "what the Trump administration is doing with their trade policy is actually working towards better, more free, more fair reciprocal trade."

Mitch McConnell — the senator whose seat Barr is now running for — went the other way, opposing the tariffs in part because of what they do to Kentucky's bourbon sector.

Then he had a chance to actually stop it, and voted no

On February 11, 2026, the House voted on a resolution to terminate the national emergency Trump used to impose the tariffs on Canada.

Barr voted Nay. Canada is the market where Kentucky's exports had just fallen 42%.

It was one of the rare tariff votes where the House had a real choice — the resolution passed 219 to 211. Only 6 Republicans voted yes; 210 voted no. Barr was one of the 210. Five months later Trump announced a 50% tariff on Canadian products, and WUKY reported in July 2026 that Kentucky bourbon was in the crosshairs again.

British Columbia's premier, David Eby, was asked whether American liquor would come back to store shelves. His answer: "There is not a chance in hell that U.S. alcohol is back on shelves in British Columbia."

That's the market Barr voted to keep locked.

Kentucky is not the only place this pattern shows up — a 119-year-old New Hampshire dairy farm is getting crushed by the same Canada tariffs while its senator says she disagrees with them and declines to do anything about it.

The damage doesn't bounce back

Barr's framing — short-term turbulence, long-term gain — assumes markets snap back once a trade fight ends. Kentucky already ran that experiment.

A Kentucky Distillers' Association-commissioned report found that after Trump's 2018 tariffs, Kentucky whiskey exports fell 26% — and overseas demand never fully recovered. That's the last round. Distributors found other whiskeys, shelf space got reallocated, and it stayed gone.

Barr knew this. In 2021 he was the one writing letters to two administrations explaining it.

What changed wasn't the economics

Nothing about bourbon changed between 2021 and 2025. What changed is that the tariffs became Trump's tariffs, and Barr started running for Senate.

He still runs on bourbon. The title he used in that 2021 press release — Co-Chair of the Congressional Bourbon Caucus — is the same one he's carried through this entire fight. He just no longer treats access to foreign markets as something worth crossing his party for.

And he won't take the question in a room full of Kentuckians. Barr holds only telephone town halls, having concluded during Trump's first term that "live in-person massively attended town halls were shouting contests." When Lexington constituents invited him to one in March 2025 — the same month Canada's tariff on American liquor took effect — more than 900 people showed up and spoke to an empty chair with his name on it.

"I will always be an advocate," he said in 2021.

Always turned out to have a deadline.

Source

New tariffs again place Kentucky bourbon in the crosshairs — WUKY, July 24, 2026. Photo: WUKY/NPR.