The Canada-US alcohol trade dispute: timeline and current status.

On 8 September 2026 the President signed Proclamation 11061, excluding certain Canadian alcoholic beverages from importation into the United States. It was one of five signed that day and was published in the Federal Register on 14 September 2026 at 91 FR 58311, document 2026-18835. It took effect at 12:01 a.m. eastern time on 29 September 2026. US Customs and Border Protection told filers on 28 September that entries containing covered products are rejected from that moment. This is no longer a duty on entry. It is a refusal of entry.

The authority is again Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, cited as 19 U.S.C. 1338, together with section 301 of title 3 of the United States Code and section 604 of the Trade Act of 1974, cited as 19 U.S.C. 2483. The stated ground is continued discrimination against United States commerce with respect to alcoholic beverages.

The ban covers beer, wine, cider and other fermented drinks, and spirits including whisky, gin, vodka and rum, as listed in the proclamation’s annex.

The annex draws its line by container. Wine, brandy, rye whisky, rum, vodka, liqueurs and other spirits in containers of four litres or less are covered outright. Above four litres, most lines are covered only when the product is packaged in bottles, cans, boxes, kegs or similar direct-to-consumption containers. Beer, cider, gin and sparkling wine are covered only when packaged that way, at any size. Liqueurs and cordials, and whiskies other than rye, appear in the annex only in containers of four litres or less, so larger containers of those fall outside the ban. Readers who need to act on it should work from the annex itself.

The commercial consequence follows from the format rather than from the product. Canadian liquid that is not packaged for direct consumption can still move south in bulk, but CBP’s guidance says it remains subject to the 50% duty. The bottle, the can and the keg cannot move at all. For a producer whose US route to market is packaged goods, that is a different business on 30 September than it was on 28 September, and the variable is the format rather than the recipe.

One transition rule matters. Product that was imported but not yet entered for consumption, or not yet withdrawn from warehouse for consumption, before 29 September remains subject to the 50% duty rather than being turned away. A companion proclamation signed the same day, Proclamation 11064, changed which Canadian products are subject to the 50% alcohol duty from 15 September 2026; separate proclamations did the same for the dairy and motor vehicle actions.

An additional 50% ad valorem duty on a listed set of Canadian products, including beer, wine, cider and spirits, took effect at 12:01 a.m. eastern time on Saturday 22 August 2026.

The instrument is Proclamation 11046, signed 20 July 2026 and published 23 July at 91 FR 46639. It was issued under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which allows additional duties in response to foreign discrimination against US commerce and caps them at 50%. Legal analyses of the action, including those published by White & Case and Morrison Foerster, describe it as the first time any president has used Section 338 to impose tariffs. The rate applied is the statutory maximum. The proclamation names the Liquor Control Board of Ontario and the Société des alcools du Québec in its recitals, describing their 2025 decisions to stop stocking American product.

Two details are worth pinning down. The duty was originally set to begin 19 August, and Proclamation 11056 of 18 August moved it to 22 August, so material published before that change carries the earlier date. And the operative product list is Annex II, which sets out the 63 tariff lines covered by this proclamation. Annex I is the exceptions annex.

Qualifying as CUSMA-originating does not exempt a product. The proclamation states only two exceptions: goods already subject to Section 232 duties, and articles covered by the World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade in Civil Aircraft, excluding unmanned aircraft. The CUSMA exemption granted in March 2025 applied to a different set of tariffs under a different authority and does not carry over to this one.

Negotiations that had been under way over the provincial measures ended without agreement on 21 August, the day before the duties took effect.

The sequence below is drawn from the Blakes public tariff timeline, the Canada Gazette, the Federal Register and the liquor authorities’ own notices.

This distinction is easy to lose, so it is worth stating plainly.

Canada did impose a 25% federal surtax on US beer, wine and spirits, beginning 4 March 2025 under the United States Surtax Order (2025-1). That order covered 1,270 tariff items, of which 95 were in HS Chapter 22. It was repealed in full effective 1 September 2025 by SOR/2025-181.

Canada’s next counter-tariff package took effect on 8 September 2026. The Department of Finance puts it at C$27.6 billion of US goods, at rates of 15%, 25% and 50%, set to match the US action dollar for dollar. Its published list contains no HS Chapter 22 lines at all: no beer, no wine, no spirits.

One province has since reached for a tariff-like instrument of its own. Saskatchewan announced on 27 August 2026, and applied from 8 September, a 50% levy on US-origin alcohol imported into the province, collected through the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority’s online ordering system. It is not a ban. Retailers can still order American product, and pay the levy when they do.

What keeps most American alcohol out of Canada today is therefore still not a federal tariff. Outside Saskatchewan it is the purchasing policy of provincial liquor authorities, which in most provinces are the monopoly importer and wholesaler. That distinction matters legally, because a procurement decision and a tariff are different instruments, and it matters commercially, because they are reversed by different people.

One term causes most of the confusion here. Most provinces did remove American product from shelves in early 2025. Several have since returned or sold down what was left, and what remains in force in those provinces is a ban on purchasing and reordering by the wholesaler. So a province can appear in the table as not buying while still having American stock for sale.

Several premiers indicated on 19 and 20 August that they would return American alcohol to shelves as part of a deal. Those statements were conditional, the talks collapsed on 21 August, and no province has been reported to have placed new orders since.

Alberta is structurally different from the rest. Its liquor retail is privatised while the province keeps a wholesale monopoly, so when AGLC stopped accepting US product in March 2025 it did not pull stock that private retailers had already paid for.

Counts of how many jurisdictions are participating vary between sources because the denominators differ. Gowling WLG counted eight of ten provinces on 24 August, excluding territories. Proclamation 11046 says all provinces and territories. CBC’s 25 August fact-check says all provinces except Alberta and Saskatchewan, without addressing territories.

Figures here are labelled by what they are. Government trade data, a company’s statement about its own business, and a trade association’s estimate are three different kinds of evidence.

On the American side

The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States reported US spirits exports to Canada of US$47 million for March to October 2025, down 73% from US$171 million in the same months of 2024. DISCUS publishes several figures over overlapping windows, each against the same period a year earlier, so the span matters: 70% covers March to December 2025, 63% covers the full calendar year, and 85% covers the second quarter of 2025 alone. These are not corroborating figures. They are one series measured over different spans.

Proclamation 11046 puts the decline at approximately 81%, from about US$718 million to about US$137 million, comparing March 2025 to February 2026 against the same months a year earlier. That covers all alcoholic beverages rather than spirits alone, so it is not comparable to the DISCUS figures. It is also the US government quantifying the injury it cites as grounds for the duty, and the document names no statistical source.

Brown-Forman told investors on 4 March 2026 that Canada, down 59%, “continued to have the most significant impact on organic sales”. That figure is the company’s own Canadian net sales, not the Canadian market. The company attributed its wider profit decline that year principally to non-cash impairments on two brands and to changes in US distribution, rather than to Canada.

On the Canadian side

The LCBO reported that for the year to 31 March 2026, Canadian product sales rose 18%, Ontario product sales rose by more than half a billion dollars for 20% growth, Ontario VQA wines rose 44%, Ontario-made spirits rose 9%, and Ontario beer and ready-to-drink both rose 25%. These are the retailer’s own figures, and are growth rates rather than absolute volumes.

The category those gains sit inside was contracting. Corby reported its own spirits portfolio grew 3.1% in value for the twelve months to 31 March 2026 against a Canadian spirits market it measured as down 3.6%. Statistics Canada recorded a fourth consecutive annual decline in national alcohol volume in the year ending 31 March 2025, with per-capita consumption at 8.0 standard drinks a week against 8.7 the year before. That release predates all but roughly four weeks of the provincial measures, so it describes the trend the dispute landed on top of, not the dispute’s effect.

Proclamation 11046 argues that other exporters absorbed the vacated volume, citing more than US$170 million of additional non-US alcohol imports between March 2025 and February 2026. Two provincial datapoints are consistent with that. At the SAQ, French wines gained 1.6 percentage points of share, roughly one million litres, against 0.4 points for Canadian wines. At the LCBO, wine share by region in the third quarter of FY25-26 was Canada 28%, Italy 25% and France 15%.

The two provinces that resumed

Alberta and Saskatchewan restored access in June 2025, and Canada’s federal surtax came off in September 2025. In those provinces, American brands have had shelf presence and no tariff for roughly a year.

The Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority reported sales of US wines and spirits down about 40% in its last fiscal year, as reported by CTV News on 14 August 2026. No dollar base was published. In Alberta, an analysis by Carleton University’s Jennifer Robson reported in the Globe and Mail put US alcohol sales down a monthly average of about 17% since restrictions and counter-tariffs were removed. Statistics Canada data cited in the same report show US alcoholic beverage imports into both provinces still 13% below 2024 levels.

Neither provincial figure carries a published dollar base, and the Alberta number is one academic’s analysis as characterised by the newspaper rather than a statistical release. Some of the decline is also supply-side: one Regina co-operative told 650 CKOM it had cut its US wine section from twelve feet to eight and stopped buying 60 US wine listings for lack of demand.

Stated consumer intent

Nanos Research, polling for CTV News between 28 and 30 July 2026, found 74% of respondents unlikely to buy American alcohol if it returned, combining 69% “not likely” with 5% “somewhat not likely”. The sample was 1,104 adults with a margin of error of 3.0 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Regional figures ranged from 80.9% in British Columbia to 64.6% in Atlantic Canada, though those sub-samples carry wider margins and the base includes respondents who do not drink.

Broader patriotic purchasing behaviour moved differently. Ipsos tracking found it peaked at 65% in April 2025 and fell to 46% by December 2025, close to where its tracking began. Ipsos noted food, alcohol and travel were among the most resilient categories.

On 20 February 2026 the US Supreme Court decided Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, No. 24-1287, decided with Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, Inc., No. 25-250, holding that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize the President to impose tariffs. That decision addressed IEEPA only. It did not rule on Section 232, Section 301, Section 122 or Section 338, the authority used for the alcohol duty five months later.

One detail is frequently misreported. Only Parts I, II-A-1 and II-B of the opinion carry six votes; the reasoning in Part III is a plurality of three, so it should not be described as the Court’s holding.

Canada began WTO dispute settlement by requesting consultations in March 2025 over the Section 232 steel and aluminium tariffs, and again in April 2025 over the auto tariffs. Requesting consultations is the first stage of that process, not a ruling. The United States has relied on the national security exception in GATT Article XXI, which it treats as self-judging. No panel finding has issued and the proceedings remain at that stage.

Two changes are likely to outlast the dispute regardless of how it resolves.

On 21 July 2026, nine provinces signed an agreement to implement direct-to-consumer alcohol sales between their jurisdictions. Eight are implementing and British Columbia has committed to February 2027. Quebec and Yukon have not signed. Interprovincial alcohol shipping has been restricted in Canada for decades, and in our view this is the most substantial movement on it in that time.

Alberta’s Whisky Act came into force on 22 May 2026, creating a voluntary legal designation for whisky produced entirely in Alberta from at least two thirds Alberta-grown grain. AGLC labelling guidance has not yet been published, so how the designation may appear on packaging is not yet defined.

• No province has resumed buying American alcohol since the 21 August collapse, and no timetable has been announced.
• Canada’s 8 September counter-tariffs are now in force; no published analysis yet measures their effect.
• Statistics Canada’s most recent alcohol release covers the year ending 31 March 2025, which captures roughly four weeks of the provincial measures. National data covering the full period is not expected until around March 2027.
• No published source tracks whether Canadian listings gained during this period have been retained.
• Nunavut’s current position has not been confirmed publicly since December 2025.

• Liquor brand marketing in 2026, the platform, retail and shipping constraints specific to spirits.
• Building a brand that stands out, on positioning in a crowded category.
• Branding and identity, how we handle origin, provenance and packaging claims.
• Canadian Whisky at Home: What the Sales Data Actually Shows

Meridian15 works with beverage brands, including Canadian producers. This article is a factual summary compiled from public records and reporting, current as of 30 September 2026. It does not advocate a position on the trade dispute and is not legal advice. Figures are attributed to their sources in the text; where sources disagree, both are reported.