DECONSTRUCTING BREWERS RETAIL.

When Our President imposed all those tariffs on Canadian goods, it was easy for Canadian officials to shut down any sales of U.S. produced adult beverages.  "[T]he Canadian government decided to pull all U.S. alcohol from the shelves of its provincial-run alcohol stores."  If you like Pennsylvania's state liquor distribution cartel, you'll feel right at home in Canada.  But with all those empty shelves as provincial retailers did their work, will Canada's brewers and distillers enjoy a new birth of freedom?

Canada struggles under its own thicket of overly burdensome and competition-hampering domestic alcohol regulations. Predictions of a "booze revolution" are spreading across the country as calls increase for the Canadian government to liberalize the country's alcohol markets, as evidenced by the recent decision to remove internal alcohol trade barriers between provinces.

While many Canadian craft alcohol producers bemoan the difficulty they face in getting their products carried in the provincial-run stores, that too may be poised to change with the advent of a renewed deregulatory ethos inside the country. As one Canadian micro-distiller put it: "We happen to have a lot of shelf space right now. They've just removed all of these American spirits."

The alcohol trade wars are hurting America in the normal ways one would expect tariffs to, but they're also having the unintended consequence of focusing the minds of Canadian government officials to deregulate their own bad booze laws—which, while good news for Canada, will just hurt American producers even more.

Trump promised to "Make America Great Again," but the main effect of his tariff policies could actually be to Make Canada Free Again.

The possibilities for student capstone projects investigating the import-substitution behavior of Canadian startup firms, complete with taste tests, intrigue.