Jack Daniel's maker says Canada pulling U.S. alcohol off shelves 'worse than tariff'

You know what's worse than pulling things off the shelves? Threatening the sovereignty of foreign nations and then making up bullshit tariffs to do so

Dear Mr. Daniel,
I'm sorry that a store pulling things from their shelves is hurting your business, but I thought you should know that this is not even the tip of the iceberg.
Regardless of what any store does, I will simply not be buying Jack Daniel's, probably ever, along with a slew of other things, as many as I possibly can.

There are so many better whiskeys around the world that I certainly don't need to.
I empathize with the collateral damage this may cause, and hope that something, anything really, is eventually enough for y'all fuckers to start thinking about getting your shit together.
In the meantime, I will simply Buy Anything But American.

I am just one person, but I am not alone.
Sincerely,
Fix your shit or get fucked,
A random Canadian

I can't even smell the stuff it's horrible.
And I drink Laphroaig neat.
- Liquid bandaids
- Are Jack and Laphroaig on similar levels? I know import vs domestic drives the prices apart some, but I just assumed Jack was more like a "cheap top shelf".
I will simply not be buying Jack Daniel’s, probably ever, along with a slew of other things
American here. You aren't alone by any stretch. Once people and countries establish alternatives they very likely won't switch back. Farmers found out the hard way the first time but they aren't very smart so here we are. Also, tariffs are considered an act of war by many.
its going to end up like soybean tariffs with china, china found other sources of soybeans from asia, and south america, and largely ditched USA. im sure canada will do the same with alcohol.
- Alcohol will be easy to replace but have a long term impact. Canada has had a growing micro-distillery industry for years now, pulling US liquor from shelves and the general increaseing "Buy Canada" intuitive creates a significant business opportunity for them. This will force people to switch from their usual drink, and once someone finds something else they like, it will be hard to court them back even after the trade war is done.
But Four Roses tho :(

Probably shouldn't have elected a stampeding bull for a president

A demented evil orange piece of shit? Like some sort or rapist nazi pedo asshole? That?
- Ya, but I tried staying contextual in my description 😉

I stole this photo from Reddit just for this occasion

I'm stealing it for the next occasion. thanks!
World’s tiniest cello?

Jack Daniel's is a Tennessee company, which voted overwhelmingly for Trump (60+%) in 2016, 2020 and 2024.

"But why did they eat MY face!?!"

I checked their donations and while pleasantly surprised still don't really care. For Americans they're a fine option, for Canadians don't buy American
- It doesn't matter if they're a good company or not. It causes them to put pressure on the government.

Random Canadian dude says U.S. threatening Canada's sovereignty 'worse than pulling alcohol off shelves"

Random American here agreeing with Random Canadian brother or sister. I stand on guard for thee!

There are some US products that are gonna be difficult to replace. This is not one of them 😂

The way country music romanticizes (read: shills) Jack Daniels you'd think it's the greatest spirit ever distilled, rather than the disgusting swill it actually is.
- Is Epic Meal Time still a thing? I remember them using Jack Dagniels for some syrup and other dishes.
- They always had better branding than booze. I've always been partial to tulamoor dew. I wonder who makes that? I'll be back with an edit
  Edit: it's scotch/Irish Wiki
- Hay man, it's also glorified in hard rock as well as tv and film. It's Americana to the maxx!

Take it up with Trump, not Canada

As an American I can confirm that crown royal and coke is superior than jack and coke.

You talking about coca cola or the other coke?
- I’ll never tell…
Stevie Ray Vaughan special
Now with more purple!
Coke is American too. Unfortunately Royal Crown Cola is too (not only the original brand, but also the current megaconglomerate overlord).
But, it would be fun to replace the "Jack and Coke" with "Crown Royal and Royal Crown".

We should do that in europe too!

As a (hopefully soon to be ex) American: do it! Pull all our whiskeys. Between the UK, Ireland, Canada, and Japan, you can replace just about anything we make.
I saw a video about American booze being taken off the shelf, and it got interrupted by an ad for Jameson. That ad happened to talk about how very Irish Jameson is.
Jameson's marketing team is on the ball LOL.
Sure, we'll buy European booze, and maybe you could buy Canadian booze when you can. Also maybe Ireland and France could ratify CETA please? We will buy your whiskeys and wines, really odd that those two countries are holding out on us on that.

Good, keep it up. Put the pain on us in the US. We need to learn our lesson.

Now say please... good girl. Now thank Daddy... that's right.

Without doing any research, I'd be hard pressed to believe they didn't support trump all the way.

Mostly Democrats actually, and no one at a Federal level.
- According to OpenSecrets, about $100k to Nikki Haley and Kentucky GOP.

I think what's wild is that Canada only makes 1% of Jack Daniel's sales while Mexico makes up 7% of their sales.

If Mexico pulls Jack off their shelves, it'll hit harder.

They should do it immediately. What the fuck are they even doing?
- AFAIK Canada can do it quickly because most liquor stores are government owned and run (LCBO in Ontario for example), whereas in Mexico it's individual retailers. And many of the retailers in Mexico are American chains: Wal*Mart, Costco, etc. If Soriana and Chedraui wanted they could stop selling American booze, but they're for-profit companies that are probably thinking they'll just let their customers choose if they want to boycott.

Who is wasting money on Jack Daniel’s anyway? Literally everything in the same price range is better

It’s $20 quality sold for $40

Yeah that whinging from that source tells us it’s an adequate target.

I enjoy seeing the seditionist red states being hit by this. I have no empathy for these people other than blue voters in these states.

Go tell it to your dumb ass president.

Cool. You're a giant corporation with pockets deep enough to keep making meaningful statements. Keep it up.

(They won't)

I'm going to keep coming back with this until some-habs takes me up on it.

is there a list of us bourbons not from the red states?
- https://distiller.com/lists/our-favorite-whiskeys-from-the-rocky-mountain-state
  https://distiller.com/lists/our-favorite-washington-state-whiskeys
  https://distiller.com/lists/the-top-whiskeys-from-oregon
- Koval is an Illinois distillery with excellent whiskey, including bourbon. I'm sure there's a few in Oregon and Washington as well.
- There is some nonsense law about naming and Kentucky but almost any small batch local whiskey is going to be better than mass produced stuff.
- Of course there is

Good. Lets stop drug passing the border.

Y'all are focusing too much on the single brand here. Yes, Brown Forman owns Jack Daniels, and yes, JD is not very good (and far worse than other American whiskeys in the same price range, whether we're talking the black label or their fancier offerings).

But Brown Forman also owns Woodford Reserve and Old Forester, which have good bourbons in their respective lineups. And, it should be noted, they also own the Scotch Whisky brands Glendronach, Benriach, and Glenglassaugh.

And what non-Canadians might not realize is that the Liquor Control Board of Ontario pretty much has a monopoly on spirits sold in Ontario, whose 15 million people account for about 40% of the Canadian population. If LCBO chooses not to purchase American spirits, that means it will basically be impossible to legally buy American spirits in Ontario, whether in a retail store, a bar, or a restaurant.

And as additional context, the American bourbon industry is facing down a bit of a contraction/recession/downturn in the coming years. Demand is softening up for most whiskeys, especially high end bourbons, compared to where they were a few years ago. Expect to see layoffs, fire sales, and bankruptcies.

I've been coming to the understanding that "bourbon" is like champagne in that it doesn't describe a type of alcohol so much as alcohol of that type produced in a specific region (though with the caveat that there might be factors about that region that also means boubon is a distinct type of alcohol due to those factors). If that's accurate, wouldn't it mean that "the American bourbon industry" is redundant like "the French champagne industry" would be? All Bourbon is American.

Jack Daniels has a nickname here and it's not positive xD

"Drain cleaner"

What’s really sad is that Brown-Forman Corp (owner of Jack Daniels brand) donated to mostly Democratic state/local candidates, and no federal / national party candidates.

Unfortunately Americans will suffer regardless of their allegiance.

Canada sends its regards. The North remembers.

Je me souviens!

You brought thus upon yourself, Kentucky.

It's from Tennessee, thank you very much. Bourbon isn't a regionally classified spirit, but Tennessee Whisky is!
Love my state; hate my statewide politicians. SMH

I guess the leopards are drinking their faces now.

"Piiiiinooooooooooooot Noiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrr"

Oh no. Anyways drink canadian. Or have a nice scotch. Really anything but American

Lol. Lmao.

I'm not much of a JD fan in general, it's an OK whiskey but it doesn't do anything that plenty of other whiskeys don't do better.

I had a personal boycott of JD going for a few years, my wife and I are both whiskey drinkers and we visited TN for the 2017 eclipse. We decided while we were there we might as well make a detour to the distillery. I'm sure with the eclipse it was probably one of the busiest tourism weeks they've had there, so we weren't surprised to find a long line waiting for us. We made the most of it, it took us about 45 minutes to get to the front of the line, it snaked through a little mini museum, and it gave us some time to decide which tour we wanted to do.

But when we got to the front of the line we were informed that all of the tours we were interested in were sold out, and the only one available was the one that didn't allow you to try any whiskey at the end.

At no point during the 45 minutes we were standing around did they make any sort of announcement or put a sign up or anything to let us know that the other tours were sold out, if they had we probably would have decided to just go on that tour, but that really pissed us off, so we left.

I decided that I wouldn't give Jack any of my money after that, not that I was buying a whole lot of it anyway.

A year or two ago they ran an ad campaign with some drag queens. I decided that my personal boycott had gone on long enough and I could reward that little bit of token wokeness, although I have to admit that I still haven't bought any JD since then.

And like too many other companies it looks like they've now rolled back their DEI initiatives, so fuck 'em, back on the boycott list they go.

Now as a whisky drinker in the US, I'm disappointed that there's going to be tariffs affecting Canadian whisky, I'm a little torn as to whether I should support my favorite Canadian brands or avoid them since the tariffs are going to be funneling money to the trump administration.

I'm certainly going to be cutting back on my American whiskeys and many other American products in protest. I encourage my fellow whiskey drinkers to the north to do the same, you guys make some fine rye, I'll gladly take some Alberta Premium over almost anything made in the States.

I suspect I'm going to find myself drinking a lot of Scotch, Irish, and Japanese whisk(e)ys for the next few years, but I look forward to the day when I can hopefully enjoy some Canadian rye again without Trump's tariffs.

I’m a little torn as to whether I should support my favorite Canadian brands or avoid them since the tariffs are going to be funneling money to the trump administration.
Come drink it at my house then.
That way you're not crossing the border with any bottles, just your stomach contents which isn't subject to import tariffs.
Unless you somehow get the whole bottle in there which would become smuggling.
- Careful, when the couple bottles I already have kicking around run out I might try to take you up on that offer.
  Assuming you're Canadian, I've had the pleasure of visiting a few different parts of your country a handful of times, and each one was of the most memorable trips of my life, so I'm always happy for an excuse to return.
  Depending on where you are, it may not even be the longest drive I've taken to get some whiskey (current record is about 12 hours)
Never been a better time to start moonshining.

Sorry, bub, we actually prefer good whiskey up here.

I have only once bought a bottle of jack.
And it was a joke to somebody who hates the stuff. (Specifically it was a minibar shot bottle… funny as hell though.)

Need more retaliation from countries. Everytime America complains there needs to be a resounding Nelson "Ha Ha".

Good, who said that only the pukeking baby diaper president is allowed to escalate things in a conflict?

Wonder what happens if more Americans stop buying their alcohol?

thier politics might shift, russia uses alcohol as a method of control to prevent uprising against putin/oligarchs.
I don't buy Jack Daniels, but I'm gonna not buy Jack Daniels even harder now.
I'm also not buying any bourbon for the foreseeable future.
Recently got Swear Jar Canadian Whisky. Haven't tried it yet. Any good? I feel like I'm gonna need the jar after it's empty.

Boo hoo. Wipe those tears with your wads of profit and if that's not enough take it up with our shithead president. Fucking Christ I'm tired of shit ass journalism. Nobody gives a fuck.

As an aside, it's interesting how "Jack Daniel's" is the brand name, with the apostrophe-s ending. It makes it a bit difficult to construct sentences talking about it. If you write "the maker of Jack Daniel's is Brown-Foreman" it makes it seem like you misused an apostrophe or forgot a noun, like it should be "the maker of Jack Daniel's whiskey is Brown-Foreman", but that's also wrong because it's not the whiskey belonging to Jack Daniel, who's dead.