Welcome in, today is Thursday, September tenth, and we begin with Washington's new import ban on Canadian alcohol, reported by The Daily Star. The United States has banned a broad range of Canadian alcoholic beverages from import, effective September twenty-ninth. The Daily Star reports the measures were published on the White House website on Tuesday, hours after Canada's retaliatory tariffs took effect. Per SouthAsianDaily, the ban covers packaged categories including sparkling grape wine, malt beer, sake, Irish and Scotch whiskies, pisco and singani, plus tequila and mezcal in containers under four litres. Dairy products, motorcycles and non-alcoholic beer are swept in as well. This follows our earlier report on the fifty percent tariff taking force. A ban is a different instrument from a duty: there is no price at which the product clears. Reaction leans toward deliberate counter-purchasing, with some expecting retail boycott dynamics to cut both ways. Also today, European Union spirits export sales fell six percent last year. Just Drinks reports the decline, and attributes it to pressure in two of the sector's main markets, the United States and China. That summary is all the account carries. Those are the two markets most European producers have booked their volume growth in, so softness in both at once narrows where stock can be reallocated. Industry reaction leans toward treating the drop as a category-mix problem rather than a pure trade shock, with a recurring view that ready-to-drink formats and smaller packs are the recruitment lane for younger drinkers. Some caution the headline figure flattens a decade of growth, and read the supply side as correcting cyclically rather than under trade damage alone. Molson Coors says its beyond-beer business has grown from under two percent of sales a few years ago to nearly ten percent today. Investing.com reports the figure came at the Barclays global consumer staples conference, where chief executive Rahul Goyal framed a business in transition. The same account puts the Midwest premium cost hit at a hundred and thirty million dollars this year, after thirty-five to forty million last year, and says the company's four hundred and fifty million dollar savings program is mostly offsetting inflation rather than funding growth. Management said the US beer category is shifting toward value channels and smaller packs, and may stay there. That is a mix shift that reads straight through to margin math. Chatter in the trade leans toward reading the beyond-beer push as acquisition-led rather than organic. Separately, Brown-Forman has handed Swiss distribution of its spirits portfolio to Coca-Cola HBC from next month. Just Drinks reports Switzerland is the twelfth territory in the arrangement, which started in Hungary in two thousand eight, and that the bottler also distributes for Bacardi and Edrington. That is the pattern worth tracking: soft-drink bottlers accumulating spirits route-to-market in mid-sized European markets the majors no longer service directly. Per the same reporting, Brown-Forman still runs its own distribution in seventeen markets, and posted sales of three point nine three billion dollars in the year to April, down one point one percent, with the United States off seven percent. Some in the trade read these partnership moves against the unresolved ownership question, arguing family voting control, not price, is the real constraint on any larger tie-up. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. Middleby says it will discontinue its brewing and distilling equipment group, including Deutsche Beverage, Ss Brewtech and Wild Goose Filling, with the wind-down substantially complete by year end. Brewbound reports Whole Foods senior category manager Mary Guiver has left the beverage-alcohol merchant team for produce, announcing the move on LinkedIn. Following our report yesterday on import and ready-to-drink gains, Brewbound says NIQ weekly scans show last year's top growth brands held ground heading into Labor Day. Campari Group has launched Sarti in the United States, debuting in New York and San Diego, and calls it its largest-ever investment behind an aperitivo launch. One last headline, Breckenridge Distillery says it has expanded its Southern Glazer's partnership into New York and California, covering its bourbon, vodka, rum, gin and its first ready-to-drink line.