Arizona breweries are feeling the financial strain of tariffs, owners tell Hobbs and Stanton

Arizona breweries told top Arizona Democrats Tuesday that they’re already feeling the financial impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

During a meeting in Tempe, Gov. Katie Hobbs and Congressman Greg Stanton asked brewery owners what the effects of tariffs are on their industry.

The business owners said tariffs on aluminium and steel in particular have made an impact.

Jon Lane, the owner of O.H.S.O. Brewery, said he’s wary of expanding his business while dealing with additional fees and less staff.

“We can’t have $30 burgers, I’m not going to have a customer. We can't have $15 beers, or I’m not going to have a customer, and as each thing rises incrementally, so do our prices,” Lane said.

Jim Erickson owns Walter Station Brewery in Phoenix. He said he felt the impacts of the tariffs before they went into effect because during the speculation, suppliers started upping their prices in anticipation.

Camryn Sanchez/KJZZ

Arizona Craft Brewers Guild Executive Director Rob Fullmer said he’s worried that prices will stay high and businesses won’t be able to adjust.

“I think the misperception people have is we’ll just bring this to the United States,” he said of the impacted industries. “We haven’t. So we’re going to have to live with a lot of these, regardless of if they drop back,” he said.

Stanton said the tariffs amount to a tax increase on American people.

“When you raise tariffs, who gets hardest hit? Working class and middle class Americans. Who best benefits from the tax policy that he is proposing? The wealthiest Americans and the largest businesses. The American people are going to be very angry if they turn these tariffs into a permanent policy and they end up having the highest tax increases,” he said.

Camryn Sanchez/KJZZ

He argued Trump shouldn’t have unilateral authority to impose tariffs without a vote from Congress and urged his Republican colleagues to take a vote on the issue.

Stanton went on to say that he thinks Republicans historically have been the ones pushing for low trade barriers and are only bending to the will of the Trump administration because it’s politically prudent.

“They’ve had to kind of flip on their long-standing philosophy. Believe me, they want to get back to - they haven’t changed their philosophy. The politics are very very difficult because if they go against the president they’d put their own political position at risk,” he said.

Hobbs agreed that bipartisanship is necessary and said that’s made it frustrating to watch the trade policies play out without response from the U.S. Senate or Congress.

She and Stanton joked that if anything can bring Republicans and Democrats together — it’s beer.