US bourbon producers warn of financial damage if EU retaliates against Trump threat
At the G20 summit in Hamburg on Friday, the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, said that if the US took measures against Germany and China’s steel industries, the EU would “react with counter-measures” within a few days.
Officials confirmed that one of the targeted products could be bourbon whiskey, 95% of which comes from Kentucky, the home state of US Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and a state that voted 62.5% for Trump in last year’s election.
“This is a really important industry to Kentucky, so people will not be happy that this in the air,” Susan Reigler, president of the Bourbon Women Association, said.
Bourbon brings $166m in tax revenue to Kentucky annually, and the industry employs nearly 17,500 people in the state, according to the Kentucky Distillers’ Association (KDA). “It’s not just the people who work in the distilleries, or the bottling plants, but also people like the grain farmers and the truckers who transport it,” said Reigler.
The US Congress declared in 1964 that bourbon could only be made in the US, just as tequila must be made in Mexico and champagne in France.Bourbon, a mix of water, grains and yeast, has historically been popular in Europe, and US distilleries have recently been looking to grow their export market in Asia and Australia.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/08/bourbon-whiskey-eu-trump-threat
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