In March 2025, Premier Doug Ford ordered the LCBO to strip American alcohol from its shelves and wholesale catalogue in a bid to pressure Washington to drop its tariffs on Canadian exports. Last week, Washington answered. President Donald Trump announced 50 per cent tariffs on nearly $20 billion of Canadian goods, including our beer, wine and spirits, and cited the provincial alcohol embargoes as one reason. The policy was sold as leverage. It has become a liability. Ford should end it.

Start with who pays: Canadian consumers. Nobody has made this argument more loudly than Ford himself. His $75-million U.S. advertising campaign, including the Reagan ad that enraged the president, was built around the message that tariffs are a tax on the country that imposes them. He is right, but the logic cuts both ways. The cost of Ford’s import ban is borne by his own constituents, especially those who prefer Kentucky bourbon or California zinfandel. In fact, a ban is even more self-defeating than a tariff; the latter at least leaves consumers a choice and raises public revenue.

Ford claims the embargo creates leverage. The LCBO, he says, is the world’s largest purchaser of alcohol. But being the biggest single buyer is not the same as accounting for a large share of the market. In 2024, the U.S. spirits industry sold $37.2 billion at home and exported $2.4 billion worldwide; Canada accounted for just $221 million (roughly half of one per cent of the combined total), and Ontario accounted for only part of that. Perhaps the embargo hurt some American distillers, but it has not moved the White House after almost a year and a half; instead, it has provided a pretext for tit-for-tat retaliation against Canadian alcohol producers.

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