Beer Institute president McGreevy criticises Trump administration’s tariff on aluminium

According to a recent report, beer industry advocate Jim McGreevy slammed the US tariffs on imported aluminium, accusing that the retaliatory measures hurt brewers and the industry as a whole.

He said in an interview to Hill. TV’s Krystal Ball and Buck Sexton: “When you have 6,000 brewers and growing every year, to put those jobs and that industry at risk for the chance of bringing back some jobs, we just don’t see it as the right solution.”

McGreevy, the president of The Beer Institute, estimates that Trump’s tariffs have put at least 20,000 industry-dependent jobs at risk.

“Aluminium tariffs were meant to bring back jobs that had left the country over the last 50 years for lots of reasons other than what’s happening in other parts of the world,” he said.

In March 2018, President Donald Trump had announced 25 per cent tariff on steel imports and 10 per cent on aluminium imports. Trump while levying the tariffs had claimed that the trade deals destroyed US steel and aluminium companies and that the tariffs were necessary to protect American workers in those industries. But critics said the tariffs resulted in hiking prices for consumers and hurt other businesses.

MCGreevy said American brewers had to face a maximum loss due to these tariffs. However, now, he is calling for more regulations and transparency on the pricing of aluminium.

“The aluminium market is a very opaque market, which needs in our view, a lot more transparency because the end users of aluminium are basically paying the bill and sometimes we don’t know what that bill entails,” he said.

 Top Republicans also urged the Trump administration to reconsider the aluminium and steel tariffs.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-lowa) said on Wednesday, January 30, that the White House would need to lift all tariffs on steel and aluminium imports from Canada and Mexico before Congress considers Trump’s new trade deal.