COLUMN: Gillibrand wants Americans refunded, and Trump bans Canadian beer and cider on Tuesday

A brewery, late September

Barley from the north

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand pointed out on Thursday, September 24, that some New York State breweries make their beer with barley malted in Canada.

In a brewery, any brewery, it is the quiet hour. The tanks hiss. A sack of barley, rough under the hand, waits against the wall. Nobody reads the label of origin.

The malt comes from the north. The beer heads south across the state. The customer does not think about the border.

The customer orders a pint. He does not ask where the barley comes from. He will not ask on Tuesday either.

That was the order of things. A quiet order.

Tuesday, something else

On September 29, that order changes in nature. That day, Canadian beer will no longer enter the United States. Nor will cider. Nor wine, spirits, certain dairy products, motorcycles, molasses.

That is the list the Press-Republican of Plattsburgh reports.

The brewery does not lose its barley on Tuesday. It loses its neighbour on the shelf.

Two countries in the same glass.

Thursday, a virtual news conference

September 24

On September 24, Gillibrand holds a virtual news conference. Her office issues a release the same day.

She calls for passage of her bill. Its name spells a pun: BAD DEAL. The pun is deliberate. It is aimed at Trump.

The full title speaks of banning antiquated duties and restoring fair levies.

Three promises

The bill would repeal all duties imposed under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930. It would refund Americans all duties already paid under that authority. It would stop the ban set for Tuesday.

She wants the law to repeal. She wants the law to refund. She wants the law to stop what begins on Tuesday.

Repeal. Refund. Stop.

Three verbs. None of them in the present tense.

The week before, Gillibrand introduced the text in the Senate with Peter Welch of Vermont. Jacky Rosen of Nevada and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota are co-sponsors.

Three conditional verbs against a date in the present.

What the text says

H.R.10175

The text already exists in the House. Representative Brad Schneider of Illinois introduced it on August 27, as H.R.10175.

Its Section 2 is short. Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 is repealed. Any presidential proclamation based on it becomes null and void.

Seven representatives co-sponsor it, including Tim Kennedy of New York, according to the text as introduced.

Then comes the refund. The president must take the necessary steps to refund duties collected under those proclamations. Before, during or after the law takes effect.

What the text leaves out

The text gives no deadline. It does not say how. It does not say whether the refund would go to the importer, the retailer or the customer.

It says only: refund.

Nor does it touch other tariffs. Not steel, not aluminum, hit in the name of national security. It targets a single section, the one from 1930. That is its strength. It is also its limit.

It is little. It is also an admission written into a law. Those duties would have been taken wrongly.

An importer who paid in August will read that word twice. A customer who paid more for a bottle will not read it. He will not even know he is concerned.

To refund is to recognize who paid.

A section never used

July 20, September 8

Section 338 dates from 1930. No president had ever expressly invoked it to impose tariffs before Donald Trump, according to the Congressional Research Service.

On July 20, Trump signed three proclamations: 50% duties against what he calls Canadian discrimination on alcohol, dairy products and vehicles. On September 8, he signed the bans that take effect Tuesday, again according to the same service.

Tariffs, then bans. An escalation in two steps.

With those who pay

I stand with those who pay these duties. American importers and households. Canadian brewers and producers.

I stand against Donald Trump’s proclamations under Section 338. Because on Tuesday, a 1930 law never used before this summer will close the border to entire products.

On Tuesday, a 1930 law bans our beer.

An old law, a new policy, a bill due now.

Fifty percent, then the wall

The law’s ceiling

Why 50%? Because it is the maximum.

Section 338 allows the president to impose duties to offset discrimination. Up to 50%, no more, the Congressional Research Service explains.

Once the ceiling is reached, the law offers a next step.

The next step

If the targeted country maintains or increases its discrimination, the president can exclude its products from the territory.

Exclude. Not tax. Exclude.

That is what happens on Tuesday.

Trump took the maximum. Then the step after. In under two months.

A 1930 law had provided for the escalation. All it took was someone to climb it.

At the end of the ceiling, there is only a wall.

Who pays a tariff

Up to $10 billion a year

A tariff is paid at the border. By the importer. Then, often, by whoever buys.

Nobody posts it. Everybody pays it.

The new 50% duties could cost American businesses and households up to $10 billion a year, Gillibrand’s release claims.

New York State alone imports more than $20 billion in Canadian goods every year, according to the same document.

The summer list

The Press-Republican lists the products hit by the duties. Paper. Steel. Aluminum. Cheese. Leather goods. Motorboats. Mattresses. Lamps.

A taxed mattress goes unseen. You pay once, telling yourself everything is going up. You feel the fabric in the store. You do not feel the duty.

The senator offers another number: New York families are already paying more than $5,500 extra because of Trump’s tariffs and other policies. The number is hers. I report it as such.

The duty is collected at customs. It is paid at the checkout.

What crosses every day

Potash, barley, electricity

Gillibrand takes inventory of what crosses the border, according to the Press-Republican. Her release notes that Canada is one of the state’s largest export markets, for goods and services alike.

More than half of the state’s agri-food exports head north. Upstate farmers fertilize their fields with Canadian potash. Breweries from Western New York to Long Island use barley malted in Canada. Canadian electricity heats homes and businesses.

The tariffs have driven up the cost of all of it, she says.

A stitched-together economy

This is not trade between strangers. It is a seam.

Potash goes one way. Wheat comes back the other. Barley crosses, becomes malt, comes back as beer.

Every stitch now has a price. And the thread belongs to whoever signs the proclamations.

The senator does not speak of Canada as a supplier. She speaks of it as half of her region’s economy.

You cannot cut a seam without tearing both panels.

Six dollars and twenty-seven cents

The senator’s number

On Thursday, Gillibrand throws out a striking number. Heating oil costs New Yorkers $6.27 a gallon, she says, according to CNY Central.

She adds that grocery, gas, electricity and housing prices are exploding, because of Trump’s tariffs and his foreign policy.

The number hits hard. It lands badly.

What the EIA says

Here is the fact that bothers my own camp. Heating oil is not first of all a matter of Canadian tariffs.

On September 9, the US Energy Information Administration forecast distillate inventories below 100 million barrels in September. It estimated diesel margins above $2 a gallon from August to November.

Relief, it writes, assumes a return to normal tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Low inventories could also push up residential heating oil in the Northeast.

Hormuz. Low inventories. Refineries in maintenance. Not Tuesday’s cider.

The senator partly knows this, since she also blames foreign policy. And yet she puts the number at the heart of a news conference about Canada.

That is true, and it does not change who pays for the banned beer, the taxed mattress, the cheese at 50%.

A good fight deserves exact numbers.

What Washington objects to

Cheese and store shelves

The White House objection has a strong form. Canada, it argues, discriminates against American products.

The grievance exists. It has to be said. It also has to be read to the end.

Canada’s retailers get shares of the cheese quota under the agreement with the European Union, not of the dairy quotas under the North American agreement, according to the Congressional Research Service.

And the provincial liquor boards have pulled most American alcohol off their shelves, the Press-Republican recalls.

Ottawa’s retaliation

Ottawa has also imposed counter-tariffs on about C$27.6 billion of American products, at 15%, 25% or 50%, Hashtag Investing writes.

Seen from Washington, the loop is simple. Canada struck. Trump answers.

And yet the loop has a beginning. It needs a date.

Every retaliation claims to be the first answer.

Where the loop begins

Shelves emptied first

The provinces emptied their shelves in response to tariffs Trump imposed under the emergency economic powers law, the Congressional Research Service writes.

Those tariffs, the US Supreme Court ruled in February 2026, were not something the law allowed the president to impose, according to the same service.

The alcohol grievance, then, answers a tax the highest American court found the law did not authorize.

Cheese, already ruled on

On dairy quotas, a first North American agreement panel ruled against Canada in 2021. A second ruled in its favour in 2023, the same report recalls.

The same report adds a fact less convenient for Ottawa. In June 2025, Canada’s Parliament passed a law barring any widening of dairy quotas in future negotiations. So Canada, too, closed a door by law.

The dispute nonetheless had a tribunal. It had a ruling.

Section 338 replaced the tribunal with a proclamation.

To proclaim is to decide with no appeal.

Four Democratic senators

Six weeks before the vote

Another fact that bothers. The bill’s four Senate sponsors are Democrats: Gillibrand, Welch, Rosen, Klobuchar.

Americans vote on November 3. The Senate leaves for a state work period from October 5 to November 6, according to Hashtag Investing.

A narrow window remains. The bill still needs a majority in the Senate. It still needs a majority in the House. It still needs two-thirds of the votes in each chamber to override a presidential veto.

Nobody is betting on that calendar.

A campaign bill too

So this bill is also a campaign piece. It promises lower costs in an election year. Gillibrand accuses Trump and the Republicans of making life more expensive than ever.

That is fair game in American politics. It is no reason to reject the text.

A partisan bill can tell the truth. This one tells a true thing: Section 338 duties were paid by Americans.

A partisan bill can carry an accurate invoice.

Tuesday’s tab

What will no longer cross

On Tuesday, trucks loaded with Canadian beer will no longer cross. The cider will stay north. So will the motorcycles.

There is the American distributor. He had been selling those beers for years. There is the restaurant near the border. Its menu offered ciders from Quebec.

The Canadian brewer loses a market with the stroke of a pen. The motorcyclist was waiting for a delivery. The customer will pay more for what is left.

The sound of a door

A ban makes no noise. No siren. No protest. A customs code changes, and a loading dock stays empty.

All you hear, in the morning, is a truck that does not come.

Gillibrand’s bill will not give back that morning. At best, it will give back the money.

On Tuesday, there will be no photo. There will be shelves. Shelves where bottles get shifted to hide the gap.

A ban is noticed by what is missing.

Refund, a rare verb

The refund clause

In this bill, one word counts more than the others. Refund.

Ordinarily, a duty collected stays collected. This clause demands the opposite for Section 338 duties. It covers what was collected before, during and after.

It does not give back lost orders. It does not give back customers who left. It gives back a sum.

To refund, in a tariff war, is to admit a simple thing. The money collected at the border did not belong to the state that pocketed it.

What Gillibrand has tried before

This is not her first attempt. Last year, she co-sponsored a bill to end Trump’s tariffs and refund small businesses, her release recalls. In March, another, to exempt small businesses from a new round of duties.

The tariffs are still there. And yet those bills left a trace.

A trace counts on the day a court or a Congress looks for who knew what.

Today’s trace serves tomorrow’s case.

Europe, and energy

A senator’s worry

Gillibrand also worries about Canada’s rapprochement with the European Union, driven in large part by this tariff war, according to the Press-Republican. If Canada ties itself to that bloc, cross-border trade could become even harder, she believes.

She does not fear, for now, that Canada will cut off energy. That would be an armed war, not a trade war, she says.

She also hopes the president’s war ambitions will stop at Iran. The sentence is harsh. It is hers.

What an ally does not do

She is right about energy. Ottawa has not cut the power. Ottawa has not shut off the gas.

I admit some discomfort. It took an American senator to say out loud that Ottawa would not cut off energy. That it needed saying at all, between these two countries, is what tightens my throat.

Ottawa retaliated with duties matched dollar for dollar, its own formula, as reported by the Congressional Research Service. It looked for other customers.

That is the difference between a wounded ally and an adversary.

The wounded ally keeps the neighbour’s lights on.

The beer stays north

Tuesday morning

Tuesday morning, in the brewery, the tanks will hiss as before. Barley malted in Canada may still arrive. Canadian beer, though, will no longer have a place on the shelf next door.

The glass will no longer hold two countries. It will hold one, and a bill.

And yet nothing forces that bill to last. A section of law can be repealed as it was passed.

The part that falls to voters

Congress can repeal Section 338. It has not done so yet. It has the power. It lacks the votes.

Will those paying Tuesday’s bill remind their representatives before November 3?

The answer will be read in a roll call.

And in a ballot box.

On Tuesday, the beer stays north, the bill goes south.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Office of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, release via Orleans Hub — the BAD DEAL Act and the September 29 ban, September 24, 2026
• US Congress — text of H.R.10175, repeal of Section 338 and refunds, August 27, 2026
• US Energy Information Administration — short-term outlook, distillates and heating oil, September 9, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• CNY Central — Gillibrand, heating oil at $6.27 and Tuesday’s ban, September 24, 2026
• Press-Republican — Gillibrand’s news conference and the products targeted, September 26, 2026
• Hashtag Investing — the Senate calendar and the odds for anti-tariff bills, September 21, 2026