This administration can't make up its mind about alcohol. Sometimes it brags that the industry is thriving. Sometimes it acts like the business needs a government intervention.
Last year President Joe Biden issued a far-reaching executive order that, among other things, ordered the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau to investigate anti-competitive issues in alcohol markets. When the report came out earlier this year, it was a complete muddle. It laid out in excruciating detail the diversity and dynamism of American alcohol markets—a result of the craft alcohol boom of the past few decades—but then urged more robust antitrust scrutiny of mergers involving large brewers.
