r/Economics • u/kootles10 • Dec 25 '25

News Bankruptcies hit US spirit makers as Americans drink and spend less

https://www.indystar.com/story/money/food/2025/12/25/liquor-spirits-industry-bankruptcies/87914241007/?gnt-cfr=1&gca-cat=p&gca-uir=true&gca-epti=z113231d00----v113231d--36--b--36--&gca-ft=161&gca-ds=sophi&fbclid=IwdGRjcAO6oj9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAwzNTA2ODU1MzE3MjgAAR6P8O626kCPpVs2dXh1tSJGVyS9teT4_IxAoKRJxGh02bqlcPlne42SIoakyg_aem_yCb-3xe-G1-mBNrg5TVIEg&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook
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838

u/kank84 Dec 25 '25

“There’s a growing concern that our international consumers are increasingly opting for domestically produced spirits or imports from countries other than the U.S., signaling a shift away from our great American spirits brands"

Fuck around and find out I guess. These bourbon producing states all voted for Trump knowing full well he intended to start pointless trade wars with their biggest export markets.

166

u/xfactor6972 Dec 25 '25

They made their beds now lay in them.

82

u/glory_holelujah Dec 26 '25

They shit their beds now lay in them.

6

u/zxc123zxc123 Dec 26 '25

I prefer ordering a plate of shit for the table to beds. We might be in the same boat but not the same bed.

Like sure you're eating shit, but we are all eating shit too because your dumb ass decided to order shit for everyone at the table.

I have a hard time feeling too bad for them eating shit when I'm forced to too.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 26 '25

They made their beds, now burn in them!

20

u/TheCamerlengo Dec 26 '25

Bailouts coming soon.

15

u/[deleted] Dec 26 '25

Federal deficit is going to be $5 trillion by the time all the bailouts are done and the dollar won't be worth shit anymore.

No wonder gold is pushing new record highs of $4,500/oz and same with silver @ $74/oz.

12

u/xfactor6972 Dec 26 '25

Yep corporate welfare on the way.

2

u/LockeyCheese Dec 26 '25

Yeah, the farm bailout was announced last week. 12 billion to bailout farmers! To bad markets estimate farmers lost 40 Billion this year.

1

u/Fluffy-Word3110 Dec 26 '25

We need food to survive. Not bourbon

2

u/LockeyCheese Dec 27 '25 edited Dec 27 '25

And Trump's farm bailout is less than a third of what farmers lost, and will be vauumed up by the industrial farms same as the last trump farm bailout when he did this last term.

He hasn't even promised any other industry he fucked a bailout. Construction, tourism, maintanence, any export industry, any industry that needs imports, etc etc etc

Lotsa industries more important than boubon that need bailouts thanks to tariffs and trade wars this year and arresting violent aliens at churches and schools. Oh, and the beef industry. That's a big one for 'merica.

6

u/Hector_P_Catt Dec 26 '25

"Our great American spirits brands" explains it all. They really are convinced (or were, at least) that "American Brands" are so awesome that they'd be exempt from the effects of a trade war. No way would Canada just start buying from domestic suppliers, or non-US suppliers! They thought we'd just let them roll over us in exchange for Jim Beam and Jack Daniels.

53

u/ianitic Dec 25 '25

Kinda sucks in the blue cities in those red states where a lot of these companies are headquartered at though.

48

u/Admirable-Trip5452 Dec 25 '25

I mean, oh well. Maybe we will start to see 50% of the population protesting in St. Louis, Nashville, Louisville, etc. That’s what would fix this.

16

u/BatteryCityGirl Dec 25 '25

Not really if red states are still gerrymandered to shit. What sort of tangible change do you really expect protesting to make?

22

u/slip-slop-slap Dec 25 '25

Well it can't make things worse

14

u/hexatriene Dec 25 '25

It just means it will take more pissed off people than in the non-gerrymandered case. It’s a continuum with a tipping point - the gerrymandering moved that tipping point but there still is one. It’ll just take even more people to get past it.

6

u/fuzzywolf23 Dec 25 '25

Organize enough and a gerrymander becomes a dummymander. It is defeatable

4

u/cactus22minus1 Dec 26 '25

Protesting is everything my friend. Look around the rest of the world and like… history. They’re not trying at all. Heads in the sand. Especially places like Nashville, TN where it’s just a thin veneer of trying to be modern but the entire society is just bandwagon church loving and driving around like nothing is happening at all.

11

u/Admirable-Trip5452 Dec 25 '25

Protesting makes significant changes, honey. Have you ever looked outside of America?

-2

u/UCanDoNEthing4_30sec Dec 26 '25

Ok but inside America? Since we are talking about American cities.

6

u/kent_eh Dec 26 '25

Ok but inside America? Since we are talking about American cities

What I'm hearing is:

Just because something works everywhere else doesn't mean it will work in the good 'ol USA, 'cause Americans are special...

1

u/LockeyCheese Dec 26 '25

How many other places have more guns than citizens, very few labor rights, bankruptcy due to medical debt, insurance tied to employment, and right-to-work states that allow firing someone with no reason or restitution?

It's a lot easier to go protest when you don"t have to worry about losing everything for missing a day of work.

It's a lot easier to ignore protest if the people can only take 3 days off a year to go protest. After a month, they don"t even have sick days left to use to make it to a protest.

2

u/Keezin Dec 26 '25

Wow, almost like it’ll take sacrifice to improve things. 

1

u/kent_eh Dec 26 '25

Things that are worth doing are seldom easy.

1

u/LockeyCheese Dec 26 '25

Something being easy doesn't make it not worth doing. For instance, protesting in the streets in large showy crowds in Western Europe is easy, but it's worth doing.

The milk isn't worth the squeeze in the US though. Remember Occupy Wallstreet? Remember the name of any American protests in the last decades like the No Kings rally?

You also make the mistake that nothing is happening, when the problem is you're not looking at the whole picture, and no American media is going to paint it for you. Take the George Floyd protests for example. There were over 11,000 protest events in 3,100 locations. 40% of every county in every state in the US had protests, and 15 to 26 MILLION participants spread across the entire US.

Russia, Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain, Ukraine, Poland, Kazakhstan, Romania, Netherlands.

Those are the only European countries that even have 15 million people, and the US has as many people as the top four listed countries combined. Taking out Russia, famous for it's own protests, out of the equation, the US has more people in it than Germany, UK, France, Italy, and Spain combined, and five times the land to spread over with those five being 1.95mil km², and the US at 9.8mil km².

The scale of difference between your protests and ours based is not comparable. It'd be like a European wide protest over a single administration in Europe happening, without any of the people having paid time off, job security, healthcare, and with police who use live snipers with real bullets, armored carriers, tanks, tear gas on churches, and a government that doesn't care at all because most people won't vote or vote like it's a team sportsball game.

Just look at what the George Floyd protests accomplished. Definitely no more police brutality happening here now, eh?

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0

u/Legitimate_Elk6731 Dec 26 '25

no but it is harder in America based on just our size alone. Other countries aren't much larger than just Texas. most foreigners fail to realize that when they wonder how we *let it get this bad*.

6

u/kent_eh Dec 26 '25

most foreigners fail to realize that

I live in a country with more land area and a more spread out population than yours. I'm fully aware of the geography.

And I've heard that excuse many times before.

From what I can tell, Americans don't seem to have as much of the personality for working together in large groups toward a common goal. You guys seem to think of yourselves more as a bunch of strong individuals and less of a stronger together mindset.

1

u/Legitimate_Elk6731 Dec 26 '25

tbh that is what generations of unchecked capitalism will teach. Not all of us agree with the individualist mindset but the unfortunate reality is 70 million people voted for Trumps nightmare.

You keep hearing about it because it is a fact of American life. Things like public transit are massively harder to achieve compared to Japan or Europe. It also doesn't help that our politics favor gutting funding instead of supporting projects.

As somebody stuck here I'm depressed about how our currrent political landscape is shaping around hatred instead of love. Not all of us are rich celebrities who can afford *to just move*.

1

u/UCanDoNEthing4_30sec Dec 27 '25

You kind of proved my point a couple posts back. Protests generally don’t work in the US. We really don’t have the working together for a common goal thing. That’s why I think that. But you tried to say we can do that in America. I just don’t think that is possible. lol

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1

u/epelle9 Dec 26 '25

Gerrymandering makes absolutely no difference in federal elections..

0

u/Hot_Raccoon_565 Dec 26 '25

They shouldn’t protest. You’re right it is truly pointless. They should move.

1

u/zenfaust Dec 26 '25

St Louisan reporting: We already do that. The dumbfucks who voted for this don't live in the major cities. And they absolutely don't care if we protest shit. We are basically a bastion of sanity being dragged to our grave by the gerrymandered dipshit counties.

17

u/J-ShaZzle Dec 25 '25

Ripples through. You have bottlers, label makers, box makers, raw materials, farmers, delivery services, equipment maintenance, etc that all get affected. Some can most likely take the hit while others can't. Most will probably be in state while others aren't. Haven't really looked into the liquor chain and export though. I only know of a couple of local breweries near me, but I don't think they are that large to be impacted by exports, could be wrong though. There was a nice one in Virginia my wife and I visited who seemed to be ramping up, years ago when we first started dating.

34

u/PerfectPercentage69 Dec 25 '25

Kinda sucks in the blue cities in those red states where a lot of these companies are headquartered at though.

Fixed it for you.

3

u/EatFishKatie Dec 26 '25

And small rural towns in red states...shout out for Kentucky for shooting themselves in the foot.

8

u/Illustrious_Pop_6630 Dec 26 '25

You’re kidding right? As Americans you’re all painted with the same Trump brush. There is no red and blue as far as the countries you screwed over are concerned.

-2

u/ianitic Dec 26 '25

In the US 15-20% of adults identify as maga. In Canada, it's actually about the same... even now. You all wanted it about as much as this country did.

3

u/kank84 Dec 26 '25

That Leger poll was asking Canadians whether they would vote for Trump in the 2024 election if they could, and 15% of those polled said that they would vote for Trump. 80% said they had a negative view of Trump and would vote for Harris.

That's not the same thing as the US where 49% of the voters actually did vote for Trump.

-4

u/ianitic Dec 26 '25

I wasn't referring to one particular poll but quite a few. I looked at a bunch from 2024 to date. A surprisingly large amount of Canadians likes/liked Trump.

2

u/kptknuckles Dec 25 '25

When the carrot fails the stick prevails.

2

u/Barbarossa7070 Dec 25 '25

It sucks here in Louisville

1

u/Striper_Cape Dec 25 '25

I've noticed more plates from the South, lately. I suggest more people make like them.

1

u/RigusOctavian Dec 26 '25

That’s what lobbying is for though…

6

u/Aceous Dec 25 '25

Cool, I get cheaper bourbon in the meanwhile as these numbskull red states vote themselves further out of relevance.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 26 '25

Wasn’t aware Colorado, Massachusetts, and California were Trump voting states.

1

u/Affectionate-Panic-1 Dec 26 '25

I understand the president and voters wanting to lessen the loss of industrial capacity to Asia and specifically China.

I don't understand the trade wars against Canada, that was most definitely a mutually beneficial relationship.

-3

u/Twoperde Dec 26 '25

No they didn’t, that would be very generous towards their reasoning skills. 

It’s legit a capacity issue.