OPINION: Give American beer a fair fight

I represent Kootenai County in the Idaho House of Representatives. I’m a businessman, and I believe in free markets. But a free market only works when everybody plays by the same rules. Right now, American brewers aren’t getting that, and neither are the Idaho farmers and truck drivers who depend on them. A targeted tariff on beer imported from Mexico would give our breweries, our grain farmers, and our workers a fair fight. That’s all anyone should be asking for.

American brewing goes back to the founding of the country. Our breweries make a good product and they pay good wages. Brewery workers in this country earn close to $80,000 a year. That’s real, family-sustaining pay, the kind of job that builds a middle class. American breweries also follow some of the strictest safety and quality rules anywhere.

It’s a different story in Mexico. Mexican brewery workers average $3,700 a year. That’s not a typo. It’s what an American brewery worker makes in a month. Mexican breweries also face fewer regulations, pay less in taxes, and buy their aluminum from China. That’s not competition. That’s a rigged game.

The results are what you’d expect. Imported beer is now nearly a quarter of the American market, up from 14% in 2013. More than 80% of it comes from Mexico. Stay on this road and imports could hit 40% of the market in a few years.

Here’s why that matters in Idaho. We are the No. 1 barley state in America. We grow about a third of the nation’s crop, and much of it is premium malt barley grown under contract for American brewers. The beer industry buys more than $1 billion a year in crops from American farmers. When beer is brewed in America, Idaho farmers have a customer. When it’s imported from Mexico, they don’t. It’s that simple. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has already found that falling American beer production means less demand for malted barley.

And it doesn’t stop at the farm gate. The truck drivers, distributors, and warehouse workers who move American beer all lose when less of it gets made here. These are real jobs held by real families.

The time to act is now. Most Mexican beer comes into this country with no tariff at all. I’m asking the Trump Administration to put a targeted tariff on beer imported from Mexico. Not to punish anyone. To make the fight fair. We’ve watched too many great American industries get outsourced while Washington looked the other way. Not this one.

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Rep. Jordan Redman represents District 3 in the Idaho House of Representatives.