No, Donald Trump Isn’t Coming For Your Tequila. But Kamala Might Be.

With just 34 days until the election, Vice President Kamala Harris is pulling out all the stops. She’s going to the border. She’s busting out previously-unheard accents. And she’s telling voters that former President Donald Trump is coming for their booze.

Earlier this month, the Harris campaign launched “Trump’s Tequila Tax,” a social media push aimed at convincing voters that Trump’s tariff proposals would cause imported alcohol prices to skyrocket.

“He wants to tax your tequila, and your Coronas, your Modelos, your Hennessy, all of it,” a campaign surrogate says in a TikTok.

Have you heard of the Trump Tequila Tax?

Trump wants a 20% tax on all imported goods. That includes your tequila, Modelos, and Coronas. pic.twitter.com/GjsZcRkp7q

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 27, 2024

If one wanted to engage in a little armchair psychology, one might say that Harris is projecting. Because if she wins the White House in November, there might not be any tequila to tax in the United States.

Under Harris and President Joe Biden, an obscure bureaucratic committee has been drafting new guidance, which, if adopted, would recommend that Americans never drink — at all. While these guidelines would not ban alcohol outright, they could, as Reason reports, lead to a wave of bad press and a slew of class action lawsuits against alcohol companies. Together, that could cripple an already-faltering alcohol industry.

This is hardly the first instance of the Biden-Harris administration attempting to meddle in Americans’ lives in the name of “public health.” Biden proposed banning menthol cigarettes early in his term, only to reverse course earlier this year when it became clear the ban would make then-candidate Biden unpopular among black voters. And the White House has come under fire for its attempt to ban gas stoves in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

But unlike the Biden-Harris administration’s attempts to ban gas stoves and menthol cigarettes — both of which received ample media coverage and public scrutiny — the effort to change alcohol guidelines has taken place behind closed doors.

Federal dietary guidelines are updated every five years by the Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services. For the current revision, HHS has kicked the alcohol question to something called the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD). The committee is, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a “secretive, six-person panel” that “operates deep within” HHS, far from the public eye.

Currently, the federal government defines “moderate drinking” as two daily drinks or less for men, and one for women. But sources close to the ICCPUD say the committee is close to adopting the World Health Organization’s 2023 declaration: “No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health.”

It may seem strange that an American agency would so wholeheartedly embrace the WHO’s position, particularly since it’s at odds with longstanding federal recommendations.

But it’s less shocking when you consider that three members of the six-person committee are literally Canadian — like, they live in Canada. It’s even less shocking when you realize that those three Canadian panelists were instrumental in imposing similar guidance at home, slashing Canadians’ recommended weekly drink intake in 2013 from 15 for men and 10 for women to two across the board.

That recommendation was so controversial it came under fire in Canada, a country where shady, unelected bureaucrats already govern what kind of drugs patients can take, and whether or not someone is eligible for elective euthanasia. Imagine how it’ll play in the United States, a country that almost started a whole second Revolutionary War two years after the first one ended because the government tried to tax whiskey.

In fact, the ICCPUD maneuverings are already so unpopular that they’ve spurred waves of bipartisan opposition. In April, Reps. James Comer (R-KY) and Lisa McClain (R-MI) wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra expressing concern that the Dietary Guidelines revision may be violating federal law. By September 5, Becerra had not responded to Comer and McClain’s request for information, prompting the lawmakers to send a follow-up letter.

In the intervening months, two separate bipartisan groups of lawmakers wrote to Becerra, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, and NIH Director George F. Koob, to express concern about the opacity and legality of the revision process and request further clarification on what the ICCPUD would decide and when.

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So far, they haven’t heard back.

It’s unclear if Harris will allow the committee to impose its new guidelines should she win the White House — but signs indicate that she will. She was presumably on board with her administration’s plans to ban menthols and gas stoves, and has previously endorsed remaking the American healthcare system to look more like Canada’s.

She certainly won’t face any pushback from Tim Walz, who imposed a 95% tax on Zyn nicotine pouches as Governor of Minnesota. Nothing goes better with no drinks like unaffordable nicotine.

It’s ironic that Harris, who has made so much hay about Trump’s “secret” plan to remake the federal bureaucracy, is currently overseeing a behind-closed-doors push to completely upend American dietary guidelines. Of course, unlike Project 2025, the ICCPUD’s proceedings are not public, nor the subject of any headlines. And, unlike Trump, Harris has not disavowed, nor even acknowledged, this effort to stop Americans from enjoying the occasional drink.

That’s about as ironic as her saying Trump’s coming for your tequila.