We begin tonight with tariffs and their impact.

President Trump has ordered a 50% tariff on over $20 billion of Canadian goods imported into the US.

Canada has responded in kind with dollar for dollar tariffs on American made goods.

We spoke with doctor Mike Clark, an economist with the University of Kentucky, about what the situation could mean for consumers and businesses.

Tariffs basically are just a tax that a country imposes on goods that are imported into the country.

When a country imposes higher tariffs on goods that are imported into it, then what is basically doing is it's raising the cost of those goods.

And so that can affect the economy in a number of different ways and affects different groups differently.

We might want to start thinking about how consumers are potentially affected by this.

So you think about U.S.

consumers, basically tariffs that the U.S.

imposes on goods that are brought in from Canada means that those goods will become relatively more expensive.

What it can also do is can also affect businesses that are relying on inputs that are brought into another country.

Again, tariffs will tend to increase the cost of bringing those goods in.

So that makes it more costly for these businesses.

The other issue is that when the U.S.

imposes tariffs on another country, it's very likely that they that other country will retaliate, by imposing tariffs on U.S.

goods that are brought into that country.

And that's what we've seen with Canada.

So we've actually seen a lot of, policy changes related to tariffs over the last few years.

We saw this first in 2018, when the U.S.

had increased tariffs on a number of countries.

We saw this again in 2025 and of the same type of thing.

And so we're seeing it now and, and what we've seen, you know, in terms of the previous, cases where the U.S.

had increased tariffs, the other countries had responded in kind, that they had increased tariffs on U.S.

goods.

Canada increased tariffs on many U.S.

goods, including, distilled spirits, which of course, covers Kentucky's bourbon industry.

As a result of that.

We saw bourbon, exports, and whiskey exports in general, to Canada decreased substantially.

At one point, I think the provinces in Canada had actually pulled, us spirits off their shelves.

And so that affects our exports of those goods.

And that becomes relevant, in here in Kentucky, because it's Kentucky workers that are producing those.

When sales go down that mean those firms are going to struggle, and that might actually contribute to a reduction in the workforce.

So kind of what we're seeing is a lot of uncertainty in this area of trade policy.

And that can actually have a negative impact on economic growth.

Because what happens is firms are looking, trying to make a decision about where they should be making their investments, where they should be building their supply chains.

And part of that decision making is based on the relative prices across these different areas.

So as tariffs are changing quite a bit, that means these firms face a lot of uncertainty.

And they may be reluctant as a result of that uncertainty, to make final decisions on where these investments should, should actually occur.

So, you know, should they actually rebuild supply chains?

They may not do that simply because they're not sure where that policy is going to end.

Canada's tariffs do not cover Kentucky bourbon this time, although some provinces are still not selling American alcohol products in protest.