Sharan Kaur served as deputy chief of staff for former Liberal finance minister Bill Morneau and is currently partner at communications firm Henley Strategies. She is a political analyst for CTV News and CTVNews.ca. Eighteen months ago, Canadians did something quietly remarkable: we stopped buying American liquor almost overnight. When provinces from British Columbia to Newfoundland pulled U.S. bourbon, wine and beer from store shelves in March 2025, critics dismissed it as symbolic, a feel-good gesture in a trade war Canada could not win. And there is something poetic in millions of dollars of Kentucky bourbon locked in Canadian warehouses, aging gracefully for no one. But while the image of Ontario Premier Doug Ford pouring out a bottle of Crown Royal lives rent-free in our minds, the numbers tell us this was always more than theatre. U.S. spirits exports to Canada have collapsed by roughly 70 per cent. More than half a billion dollars in American alcohol exports has been wiped out. Kentucky distillers and California winemakers, many of them in districts represented by U.S. President Donald Trump’s own allies, have described the Canadian boycott as devastating. No other retaliatory measure Canada deployed sent a clearer message to Washington: access to the Canadian market is a privilege, not an entitlement. So now, as reports emerge that Ottawa may put American alcohol back on shelves and drop certain counter-tariffs as part of an interim deal ahead of the Aug. 19 tariff deadline, the predictable chorus has begun. Capitulation, they say. Elbows down. Leverage, not policy A federation that has worked hard to stay united is showing cracks as provinces jockey for their own interests. B.C. Premier David Eby says there is “not a chance in hell” American alcohol returns to his province’s liquor store shelves, and he refuses to lift the ban, which he views as crucial leverage against escalating U.S. tariffs. That reading has it exactly backwards. Retaliation is not a policy. It is a tactic, a carefully chosen lever, and a lever only has value if you are willing, eventually, to trade it for something. The provincial liquor bans were never meant to become permanent fixtures of the Canadian economy. They were meant to create pain that Washington would pay to end. That pain is now real, measurable and concentrated in politically sensitive states. The time to convert it into tariff relief for Canadian steel, aluminum, autos and softwood is when the other side feels it most. That time is now. The domestic cost And we should be honest: the pain has not been one-sided. When U.S. products came off the shelves, overall spirits sales in some provinces dropped by a fifth. That revenue came straight out of the provincial treasuries that fund hospitals and schools. Restaurants and bars have spent a year-and-a-half explaining to customers why an old fashioned no longer comes with bourbon. Liquor boards are sitting on tens of millions of dollars in stranded American inventory that cannot legally be sold, gathering dust while taxpayers carry the cost. A boycott that punishes the boycotter indefinitely is not leverage. It is attrition. None of this means Canada should give away the store. Supply management is not on the table, for obvious reasons, and Prime Minister Mark Carney has been clear it will not be. Nor does it mean Canadians must forgive or forget. The buy-Canadian habit built over the past 18 months will likely outlast any trade deal, as our own distillers and winemakers can attest. They stepped up and won that shelf space on merit. The market share American producers lost may never fully come back. That, too, is a consequence Washington will have to live with. And whatever Ottawa signs, the buy-Canadian movement must continue; as must the pressure to break down the barriers we have built against ourselves. The interprovincial rules that make it harder to sell Canadian wine in Toronto than California wine has to be the next front, and it cannot slip down the priority list the moment a tariff deal is done. But there is a difference between holding a grudge and holding a position. If lifting the liquor bans and paring back counter-tariffs helps secure real, durable relief from the U.S. tariffs that are actually costing Canadian jobs in Hamilton, Windsor and Kitimat, then it is not a concession at all. It is the whole point of imposing the bans in the first place. Time to coordinate Premiers who vow to keep American bottles off their shelves no matter what Ottawa negotiates should think about what that actually achieves. Once a deal is signed, provincial bans stop being leverage and become a liability, an irritant that invites retaliation against the very industries the deal is meant to protect. Solidarity was the right instinct when the elbows went up. Coordination is the right instinct now. Canadians were told this trade war would demand sacrifice, and they delivered, patiently and at real cost to their own provinces’ bottom lines. They did not do it for the satisfaction of empty shelves. They did it so that when the moment came, their government could walk into a negotiating room with something Washington wanted back. That moment appears to have arrived. The measure of success was never how long the bourbon sat in the warehouse. It is what Canada gets for putting it back on the shelf.
