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NEW YORK (AP) — The trade war between the U.S. and Canada escalated again this week as the U.S. announced import bans on most alcoholic beverages from Canada, along with other products including whey, molasses and motorcycles.
The U.S. had already imposed 50% tariffs on about $20 billion in Canadian products — about 5% of the $381.92 billion worth of products that the country sent to the U.S. last year. The import bans announced late Tuesday target some of those products.
Exporting products to the U.S. with a 50% levy would have been difficult for Canadian businesses. But the import bans, set to be implemented on Sept. 29, are designed to increase the pain even more.
Import bans are “extremely unusual as a artifact of trade policy,” said Jonathan Doh, professor of international business at Villanova University. “I can’t remember any action in the modern era that involved an absolute ban.”
But he said they are, “in terms of the material impact, not that great overall,” except in specific categories like alcohol.
Here’s a look at the products in the cross-hairs of the import bans.
Alcohol brands under pressure
The trade war has escalated boycotts on American alcohol in Canada, as some provincial liquor boards and stores started taking U.S. labels off store shelves beginning in 2025.
“What that effectively meant was that U.S. liquor, wine, beer, was banned from the Canadian market,” Doh said. “And I think this perhaps appears to have stimulated the U.S. trade policy officials to think, ‘Well, you’re gonna ban some of our imports, we’re gonna ban some of yours as well.'”
The U.S. import ban covers a wide array of categories: beer made from malt, certain types of wine, and spirits like bourbon, whisky, gin, vodka and others.
In 2023, 17.5 million 9-liter (2.4-gallon) cases of Canadian whisky were sold in the United States, worth about $2.3 billion in revenue for distillers, according to the trade group the Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S.
Overall, the U.S. imported about $846.1 million of the products on the import ban list in 2025, per U.S. trade data.
“I see this very much in the spirit of kind of tit-for-tat,” Doh said.
Protein-additive whey is a target
The dairy import ban focuses on whey, a byproduct of cheese-making that can be used to add protein to products.
The demand for products with added protein has skyrocketed, causing shortages of food-grade whey protein and pushing prices to new records.
According to U.S. trade data, almost half of the $73.6 million in general whey and modified whey that the U.S. imported in 2025 came from Canada, although the whey products included in the ban are a smaller fraction of that.
