Tequila’s US Lifeline: Mexico Pushes Congress to Keep It Tariff-Free

Tequila’s US Lifeline: Mexico Pushes Congress to Keep It Tariff-Free

Three members of the Congressional Tequila Caucus spent Wednesday in Jalisco, touring the regulator’s laboratories and agreeing a seven-point agenda with the industry. Top of the list: keep tequila recognised as a distinctive product under USMCA and keep it entering the United States duty-free. The reason is one number. America takes 81% of everything Mexico exports.

By Vim, Editor of 12×75

In brief

• On September 23, 2026, US lawmakers Salud Carbajal, Linda T. Sánchez and Emily Randall, members of the bipartisan Congressional Tequila Caucus, visited Jalisco, toured the CRT’s laboratories in Zapopan and met the agave-tequila production chain and Governor Pablo Lemus Navarro.
• The meeting produced seven areas of action. The first two: preserve tequila’s recognition as a distinctive product under USMCA, and preserve its duty-free access to the US market.
• Also agreed: continuing the bilateral memorandum of understanding on tequila trade, and deepening technical cooperation between CRT laboratories and the US TTB on authenticity and quality.
• The dependency number: of 288 million litres of tequila exported, 232.9 million went to the United States, or 81.02%.
• Timing matters. USMCA is in its scheduled joint review, which makes this the moment when the terms get reopened.

The number that explains the entire visit

Eighty-one per cent. There is no diversification strategy, no emerging market and no domestic consumption growth that offsets a disruption to a market taking four fifths of your exports. Spain and Germany, the next markets of any size, are rounding errors by comparison and both softened this year.

That is what makes tequila different from most protected products. Champagne can lose the American market and survive on Europe and Asia. Scotch sells everywhere. Tequila, by law, can only be made in one country, and by commercial reality is sold almost entirely into one other. It is the most concentrated major spirits category on earth, and concentration is another word for exposure.

What was actually agreed

The CRT hosted the delegation at its headquarters and the meeting produced seven areas of cooperation. Four are worth spelling out.

CRT president Aurelio López Rocha made the reciprocity explicit: “A year ago, in Washington, the CRT had the opportunity to thank the members of Congress who gave tequila a bipartisan space through the Congressional Tequila Caucus. Today that relationship completes the circle: you are here in Jalisco, at the origin, to see first-hand the land, the people, the institutions and the controls behind every bottle of tequila.”

Why the fourth point is the most interesting

Everyone will report the tariff line, and it is the important one commercially. But the CRT-TTB laboratory cooperation is the item with the longest tail, and it lands in the middle of the argument the category is already having with itself.

The United States has its own analytical capability at the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, which validates label claims. Mexico has the CRT, which certifies tequila at source under NOM-006-SCFI-2012. Tying those two together means a shared technical basis for deciding what is and is not authentic tequila, on both sides of the border, using the same methods.

That matters because the category is currently being litigated in American courts by consumers who say lab testing shows some bottles contain ethanol that did not come from agave. Every defendant denies it and nothing has been proven, but the underlying question, who verifies what is in the bottle and how, is exactly what this cooperation is about. A category that wants to keep a protected designation has to be able to demonstrate that the designation means something, which is also the argument behind the additive-free movement and the reason the additives debate has become a legal one.

The cracking down on misuse of the denomination is the other half. If tequila can only come from Mexico, somebody has to police the products around the world that imply otherwise, and that is easier with the importing country’s tax authority in the room.

The backdrop: a category having a difficult year

The lobbying is happening against numbers that are not helping Mexico’s negotiating position, and it is worth being straight about them.

Production is down slightly, exports are up slightly, and the industry body is forecasting a sales decline for the year. In the US, the growth that does exist is concentrated in a few mid-priced brands while premium giants soften. That is a category that needs its main market to stay easy, not one negotiating from strength.

It also explains the diplomatic effort. When business is booming, nobody flies three members of Congress to Jalisco. When four fifths of your revenue depends on one country’s trade policy, during a year when that country has been unusually willing to use trade policy as a weapon, you fly them out and show them the laboratories.

What could actually go wrong

Two things, and they are different in kind.

A tariff

The obvious risk. A tariff on tequila would be paid by American importers and passed largely to American drinkers, raising shelf prices in the country that buys 81% of the product. It would not move production anywhere, because tequila cannot legally be made outside Mexico, so it functions purely as a price increase on a popular imported good. That is an argument the caucus can make in Washington on behalf of American consumers rather than Mexican producers, which is precisely why a bipartisan caucus is useful.

Losing the distinctive product designation

Less likely and much more serious. If the United States stopped formally recognising tequila as a product that can only come from Mexico, the protection underpinning the entire denomination in its biggest market would weaken, and the door would open to products made elsewhere using the name. That is an existential question rather than a pricing one, and it is why it is first on the list of seven rather than second.

What it means for drinkers

If the caucus succeeds and nothing changes, nothing changes, which is the point. Tequila keeps arriving in America duty-free, prices stay where they are, and the only difference is better cooperation between two laboratories, which over time should mean fewer fake and mislabelled bottles.

If a tariff did arrive, expect it to show up at the shelf within a few months, hitting the premium end hardest in percentage terms, and expect the mid-priced brands currently driving the category’s growth to be the most resilient, because they always are. The bottles on my best tequila list come overwhelmingly from small producers with no capacity to absorb a duty on their own margin.

The more interesting long-term consequence is the authenticity work. A category that ties its regulator to the importing country’s tax authority is building the infrastructure to make its own quality claims enforceable, and that is genuinely good for anyone who buys tequila. It is the same direction as Patrón’s WSET-backed agave school and Don Julio’s production storytelling: a category discovering that provenance only has value if somebody checks it.

The last word

Tequila spent the last decade being the great success story in spirits, and success made it look invulnerable. It is not. It is a product that can legally be made in one country, is sold overwhelmingly into one other, and depends on a trade agreement currently being reopened by an administration that has shown it will use tariffs on spirits as leverage in disputes about something else entirely.

Three members of Congress walking through a laboratory in Zapopan is not a headline. It is insurance, bought cheaply, at exactly the right moment. And the industry knows precisely what it is insuring: not a tariff line, but the difference between being a protected designation and being a flavour profile anyone can copy.

Sources

• Consejo Regulador del Tequila: US congressional Tequila Caucus members visit Jalisco
• El Heraldo de México: visit detail and export figures
• El Informador: the seven areas of cooperation and Aurelio López Rocha’s remarks
• MEXICONOW: USMCA discussion and priorities
• Vinetur: delegation detail ahead of trade talks
• Congressional Research Service: USMCA joint review process

Export figures are the CRT’s, covering January to August 2026. The seven areas of cooperation are as reported by Mexican outlets; no binding commitment on tariffs has been announced, and trade outcomes are decided by governments rather than by a congressional caucus. Correct as of September 25, 2026. Please drink responsibly.