Programming note: I’m taking Labor Day Weekend off, so no Weekender this Sunday. I’ll be back in your inbox next week. Hope you’re able to relax a bit over the holiday as well. See you on the other side.—Dave.

The American beverage-alcohol business has been obsessed with branding since… well, for one thing, certainly before anybody was calling it “the American beverage-alcohol business.” This fixation on developing and fiercely guarding intellectual property dates back to roughly 1870, when a Busch first bought shares from an Anheuser in St. Louis, and the Brown family patriarch launched a bourbon labeled “Old Forester” in Louisville. Nearly two centuries later, booze brands are more important than ever, but despite companies’ best efforts, they’re not immune to the vagaries of the stateside political landscape. The United States’ top beer, wine, and spirits brands, so recently in high demand around the world, have seen their export sales slide as Trump has tanked the country’s reputation on the international stage. For distillers of whiskey—arguably the single most “American” drink of them all—the timing couldn’t be worse.

Joining The Fingers Podcast today is Susannah Skiver Barton, a longtime spirits journalist who’s been working the bourbon beat since long before there was any boom to call bust on. A journeyman—er, journeywoman? Journeyperson?—reporter with deep sources, extensive experience, and a gimlet eye for public-relations puffery, the Raleigh-based writer has been all over whiskey’s MAGA-induced trade woes from the jump. On this episode, we spoke about which distillers benefit from a busted market, what to look for in the store while the brown-liquor industry is on #glutwatch, and of course, how the Trump administration’s damage to America’s “brand” abroad has hurt American whiskey brands here at home. All that, plus much more. Tune in below.

While the excerpts below are free, the full interview on The Fingers Podcast is exclusively for paying subscribers.

I’m working on getting the The Fingers Podcast archive back online, too. There were some real bangers in there! More to come soon.

The transcript excerpts below have been edited for length and clarity. This interview was recorded July 14th, 2026.

Infante: You wrote a fantastic piece for VinePair titled "Bourbon's Global Soft Powers Fading as Trump Tariffs Reshape the Industry.” It got at the political economy around whiskey as it sort of plays out in traditional export markets. For you know people who forget their International Relations 101 syllabus, how would you characterize soft power in this context?

Skiver Barton: I hate to use an industry term, but like it's the “halo effect.” It’s vibey, right? It's the positive or negative association that you have with something just by like thinking about it or seeing someone interact with it or consume it. It’s often consumption. I think very difficult, maybe impossible to quantify, but that absolutely plays into quantifiable things like sales figures. Olivier Ward of Everglow Spirits, he gave the best quote about like what soft power is because I struggle even now, having written this article, to kind of put it into succinct words.

Infante: I’ve got it right here. “Soft power is the cultural pull of a country, the desirability of its lifestyle, or just the emotional association that people project onto products of a place. Bourbon has always traded off that. There is a definite reality that bourbon is both cultural and very much linked to America.”

Skiver Barton: There were tariffs that that wreaked a lot of havoc in the first Trump administration, but what's happening now is, I think, very separate and very different from that.

Infante: The reason our trade counterparts are targeting Jack Daniels is not because they believe that's going to cripple the US economically. To some extent, it’s a cultural message that they’re send, right? And the small brands kinda skate on—I mean, they still get lumped in…

Skiver Barton: There's no skating. The cultural thing, yes, it's a good point, it hurts. But this creams the small brands. Brown-Forman can weather these storms, right? Beam can weather these storms. But every small American whiskey brand that exports right now is in a state of—I don't want to say panic, but kind of freaking out. During the first Trump administration, when he tariffed Scotch and various things from the United Kingdom and they tariffed us right back, that wiped out several brands. Really healthy export businesses. That never came back.

Infante: You had written earlier this year that there may be some knock-on benefits for consumers, but not the one that a layperson might expect: “Oh man, like there's all this whiskey that means prices are going down!” That's not necessarily true, right?

Skiver Barton: Nobody wants to cut their prices. Nobody wants a race to the bottom. So don't expect to see a whole lot of price cuts. What consumers are probably going to see, and in fact have already been seeing for the last few years, and I've been keeping my eye on this since 2023, or even before, is better value for money. You're going to see age statements coming back. You're going to see or taste older whiskey in a non-age statement bottle. Your average Woodford Reserve was four or five years old? That that might bump up to five to six, or six to seven. You may see a higher proof on something that was previously 80 proof. I think maybe a silver lining of this corrective period is that maybe we're gonna see the taters fall away because shit is not holding its value. Some things will always hold their value. But three years ago people were paying $200 plus for Blanton’s. Sorry, like you can find Blanton's like at cut rate prices now. Yeah, that's cooled

Infante: Yeah, that’s cooled off a lot lately.

Skiver Barton: Maybe we're gonna see some some sloughing off of the piggyback tater wagon bullshit, and people will buy whiskey just to to drink again. Or if you're gonna collect it, and let it sit on your shelf, great, but you're gonna have to wait another 10 or 20 years for it to turn into something sellable, if you want to make a profit off it. I'd like to see that happen. Enough with the fucking flipping.

Since starting The Fingers Podcast back up, I’ve spoken with: