At the beginning of June, President Trump upped the tariff on steel and aluminum imports from 25% to 50%. Beer packaged in aluminum cans is subject to the levy.
As for all businesses navigating tariffs, Constellation Brands’ highlights that the uncertainty makes it difficult to predict the impact. But it is currently estimating this tariff hit will be in the region of $20m.
“There’s a lot of guesswork, more so in this year’s forecast as it relates to things like the impact of potential tariffs or the potential impact of tariffs and the potential impact of unemployment of government related layoffs,” said Garth Hankinson, CFO, Constellation Brands, speaking in the company’s Q1 2026 earnings call yesterday. “So a fair amount of uncertainty as we go through the year.
“Going forward, we think that the impact of that is going to be roughly $20m.”
Constellation Brands’ beer portfolio includes several top selling Mexican import beer brands such as Corona, Modelo and Pacifico. While the beer business continues to outperform the total beverage alcohol category, the company is also seeing a slowdown in consumption and its beer sales decreased 2% over the quarter, ‘reflecting socioeconomic headwinds affecting consumer demand’.
However, the company remains confident in its unchanged revenue guidance outlook for its beer business for the year, and Constellation Brands remains bullish about the long-term strength of the category.
Consumers, and in particular the key Hispanic consumer (which represents around half Constellation Brands’ beer consumers), remain ‘very interested in beer’, said CEO Bill Newlands.
“What has occurred is that occasions in which beer is consumed have decreased because of concerns in the socioeconomic area,” he said.
“So consumers are not going out to eat as much as they had, they’re having less social occasions at home.... it doesn’t change their interest in consumption of beer. It simply has been that those occasions have decreased.
“So I think you’re going to easily see it revert to a more normal scenario as the macroeconomic scenario comes back to a more normal environment.”
