The disco ball may have been turning on the porch of The Alchemist Brewery Monday afternoon, but the five-alarm fire wasn’t on the dance floor — it was in the local economy.
Representatives from the hospitality, brewing and distilling, retail and manufacturing sectors gathered in Stowe Monday with Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., and discussed before a crowded room the significant negative impact Republican President Donald Trump’s tariff strategy and other policy choices were having on their businesses.
Welch didn’t mince words in his opening statement for the discussion, enumerating the higher costs these import taxes would have on the cost of practically everything people buy and much of the goods produced in Vermont, as well as the chilling effect Trump’s antagonism toward Canada was having on the statewide tourism economy.
The stock market may have seen a rebound from its post-tariff dive after Trump put a stay on many of the sweeping reciprocal tariffs announced earlier this month, but the volatility and uncertainty of this administration’s economic strategy is having a major impact in businesses in Vermont and across the country, Welch said among various shades of beer, finger sandwiches and cubes of cheddar.
“When the history of these tariffs is written, it’s going to go down as one of the biggest economic blunders in the last century in this country. That’s how bad it is,” he said.
Jen Kimmich, who owns The Alchemist with her husband John, said their costs were certain to go up — it’s just uncertain how much. The Alchemist sources the cans in which it distributes Heady Topper and other brews through the Ball Corporation, which manufactures the cans out of recycled aluminum sourced from Brazil that’s processed in Canada before it’s brought stateside.
The hardening of the U.S./Canada border has had a dampening effect on tourism in Vermont.
Kimmich said Ball has absorbed 10 percent of recent price increases but passed on an additional five percent increase to buyers like The Alchemist, and prices may rise further. The malt The Alchemist sources from a family-owned farm in the United Kingdom is exempt for now but there’s concern it might soon be subject to a tariff.
“We have a global economy that works. It is a freaking beautiful global economy that works for everyone,” Kimmich said to audience approval.
John Lacy, CEO of Burton Snowboards, echoed those concerns about the effect tariffs are having on the company’s ability to manufacture and distribute their products, two-thirds of which they source from East Asian countries.
“Consumer confidence has been slipping since the administration has taken power, and we have felt that in our business, even with a great winter in most areas in the world,” Lacy said. “Then you lay the hammer with this scenario of uncertainty, and how are we going to navigate knowing we’re looking at 46 to 145 percent increases on the cost of goods?”
Kimmich also mentioned the other major impact of the first few months of the Trump administration, which has been the subject of other round-table discussions Welch has held elsewhere in Vermont: the hardening of the border between the United States and Canada that, along with the ill will generated by Trump’s insistence that the country of 40 million will become the “51st state,” which has had a dampening effect on tourism in Vermont.
“We’ve seen it the last two, three months from Canada. Quebec is a huge segment of our tourism here,” she said.
Christa Bowdish, who owns the Old Stagecoach Inn in Waterbury, said Canadian tourism accounts for about 15 percent of her primarily tourism-driven business. The snowy winter gave her business a January boost, but it declined in February and March following Trump’s threatening rhetoric toward Canada and tariff announcements.
She said the downturn has caused her to put a hold on the expanded benefits she was hoping to provide her staff this year.
Eric Warnstedt, whose Heirloom Hospitality owns restaurants in Waterbury, Stowe and Burlington, took a more staid approach than his fellow panel members.
“We’re really not sitting there clutching our pearls or wringing our hands,” he said. “It’ll be a moving target for us. I think I was saying earlier when we were chatting in the crowd that I miss the days when I knew less, and it was simply just, show up, work really hard, and most likely, if we do that, we’re going to succeed. Since Covid, the only thing we really know is that if we focus on the inside of our four walls, we’re most likely going to get through.”
ICE inaction
Undergirding this discussion on the economic impact of the federal administration’s policies was the escalation of its extrajudicial arrests of legal residents in the United States, a program for which Vermont has increasingly served as a holding area.
Just prior to Welch’s roundtable in Stowe, Mohsen Madawi, a green card holder and leader of pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at an immigration services office in Colchester after he was summoned to take his citizenship test.
Vermont prisons are increasingly being used by federal agents to detain those like Madawi, whom the administration is arguing harm the United States foreign policy interests under a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, according to reporting by VTDigger. Rümeysa Öztürk, a student at Tufts University in Boston, was abducted in a similar incident to Madawi’s and her case is currently being heard by a federal judge in Burlington after she was moved to Vermont following her arrest.
Lt. Gov. John Rodgers, who was in Stowe on Monday, said Gov. Phil Scott’s cabinet had not yet discussed the growing use of Vermont facilities in imprisoning people in arrests like Madawi’s and Öztürk’s.
“My own personal feeling is, if there are criminals and they’re not here illegally, then they should be swept up. Now there’s people with green cards and people who have legal status here that are being picked up, and it’s completely inappropriate,” Rodgers said, and vowed to bring up the matter to the governor this week.
After Democrats in the state Legislature urged Scott to cancel contracts with the federal government that allow it to use Vermont facilities, the governor released a statement Tuesday evening urging the federal government to quickly produce evidence that Madawi was a threat to national security or release him, and vowed to remain in contact with the federal delegation on the matter.
As Welch heads community discussions in Vermont, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., leads rallies against the administration across the country, which included an appearance at the music festival Coachella. Vermont’s junior senator said Democrats’ strategy to combat Trump is to drum up public opinion against him.
“I think Trump will respond to public pressure, so the more people articulate the concrete, destructive reality of these perils, the more pressure on the administration,” Welch said. “The more people do that, the more many of my Republican colleagues are going to have to start paying attention to their constituents, not just what President Trump wants.”
Story Written by Aaron Calvin, Stowe Reporter