Mexico's Economy Ministry says it will start imposing its own tariffs on imported alcohol from countries that keep steep duties or regulatory barriers on tequila. Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard made the announcement on July 24, the government's newly designated National Tequila Day, framing it as a push to dismantle what he called artificial restrictions on Mexico's best known spirit.
Reporting from Mexico News Daily and Mexican outlets including Infobae and Periodico Correo confirms the substance of the announcement: Ebrard said that if a trading partner hits Mexican tequila with tariffs as high as 150 percent, Mexico will respond by restricting that country's products in kind. He did not name a specific country or timeline for the new duties, and the ministry has not published a list of targeted goods.
The trade math behind the threat
Tequila exports reached nearly 4.2 billion dollars in 2024, according to Mexico's Agriculture Ministry data cited by Mexico News Daily, making it the country's second largest agro industrial export after beer. The category ships to more than 120 countries and moved over 400 million liters last year, and it was reportedly the only spirits category to grow globally in that period, up 1.2 percent. Industry data firm IWSR is cited putting global tequila volume growth at a 7 percent compound annual rate from 2019 to 2025, cooling to roughly 2 percent through 2030. Ebrard's core complaint is asymmetry: he said some importing markets impose tariffs up to 150 percent or non tariff barriers on tequila, while Mexico applies comparatively few restrictions on competing spirits coming in. That imbalance, not a single country's policy, is what the ministry says it wants to correct.
Where this sits inside the bigger tariff fight
The announcement lands inside an active and separate dispute with Washington. Reuters reported that Ebrard said on July 23 that Mexico would see no change in its effective tariff rate after the United States announced new duties of 10 and 12.5 percent on 60 trading partners, because goods compliant with the USMCA remain exempt, a carve out Ebrard said covers about 85 percent of Mexican exports to the US. Beverage alcohol trade trackers, including Park Street's ongoing tariff timeline, have likewise noted that USMCA compliant products, tequila and mezcal among them, have so far been spared from the newer US duties. Ebrard's tequila specific threat is a different instrument aimed at non US markets that impose their own tariffs, but it arrives as Mexico and the US are mid review of the USMCA itself, a process US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has said will likely proceed on a bilateral track.
Who actually gets touched
The houses most exposed to foreign tariff walls are the export dependent NOMs that built volume in markets like the European Union and parts of Asia, where duties and licensing rules on spirits imports vary widely and have long frustrated Mexican producers. Tequila Watch has not scored any bottle specifically because of this announcement, since it is a policy signal rather than a product change, and we have no evidence yet that it affects sourcing, agave contracts or production at any distillery in our database. For context, our highest rated Verified Pure bottles, including Leucadia Blanco and Fortaleza Blanco Still Strength at 96, and volume leaders like Tequila Ocho Plata and Siete Leguas Blanco, all depend on export markets for a meaningful share of sales, which is the same exposure Ebrard is describing at a policy level. None of that changes our scoring, which is based on blind tasting and purity testing, not trade politics.
What we are watching
We are watching for the actual text of any new Mexican tariff schedule on imported alcohol, since Ebrard's remarks so far describe intent rather than a published measure. We are watching whether any specific country, the European Union, India or others with high spirits duties are named as targets. We are watching the USMCA review process through 2026 for any language touching tequila or mezcal market access. And we are watching whether IWSR's growth forecast holds given that Ebrard himself flagged the deceleration from 7 percent to roughly 2 percent annual growth through 2030.