Athens distillery celebrates anniversary with move
ATHENS — Athens residents Deanna Schwartz and Kelly Sauber celebrated the fifth anniversary of their business, the West End Cider House, last month.
They also celebrated another big goal for their small business: the relocation of their distillery and cidery business to a refurbished warehouse nearby.
Sauber and Schwartz had started what’s now called the West End Ciderworks and Distillery in 2012 in Meigs County, then known as Dancing Tree Distillery and then Fifth Element Spirits. After years of work, Sauber, a distiller and zymurgist, now has all of his equipment moved into the new location, just a stone’s throw away from the West End Cider House in Athens.
From the new West End Ciderworks and Distillery, Sauber and Schwartz will sell bottles of the bourbon, gin, vodka and unique brandies Sauber crafts (think pawpaw or elderberry brandy) and offer tastings of those liquors and cider made from Ohio apples.
While it was a lot of hard work to gut and refit the building at 237 W. State St., it’s equally hard to run a distillery business in Ohio, Sauber said during a tour of the space last month. Policies of the Ohio Department of Commerce’s Division of Liquor Control make it difficult for small distillers to grow their business, he said.
Business groups are struggling to figure out where to stand in the fast-shifting political climate. They have happily supported Trump’s corporate tax cuts and moves to loosen environmental and other regulations. But the capriciousness of Trump’s use of tariffs has proved alarming.
“Business is losing,” said Rick Tyler, a Republican strategist and frequent Trump critic. “He calls himself ‘Mr. Tariff man.’ He’s proud of it . ... It’s bad news for the party. It’s bad news for the free market.”
“It was a good wake-up call for business,” James Jones, chairman of Monarch Global Strategies and a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico, said of Trump’s move to threaten to tax Mexican goods.
Just last week, the sprawling network led by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch announced the creation of several political action committees focused on policy — including one devoted to free trade — to back Republicans or Democrats who break with Trump’s trade policies. A powerful force in Republican politics, the network is already a year into a “multiyear, multimillion dollar” campaign to promote the dangers of tariff and protectionist trade policies.
The Chamber of Commerce, too, is in the early phases of disentangling itself from the Republican Party after decades of loyalty. The Chamber, which spent at least $29 million largely to help Republicans in the 2016 election, announced earlier this year that it would devote more time and attention to Democrats on Capitol Hill while raising the possibility of supporting Democrats in 2020.
Few expect the Chamber or business-backed groups like the Koch network to suddenly embrace Democrats in a significant way. But even a subtle shift to withhold support from vulnerable Republican
candidates could make a difference in 2020. Trump seems unfazed. Myron Brilliant, head of international affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, went on CNBC on Monday to decry “the weaponization of tariffs” as a threat to the U.S. economy and to relations with trading partners.
Trump responded by phoning in to the network to declare, “I guess he’s not so brilliant,” and defend his trade policies.
“Tariffs,” he said, “are a beautiful thing.”
Section 232 of the Trade Expansion of 1962 lets the president impose sanctions on imports that he deems a threat to national security. Congress is considering bipartisan legislation to weaken the president’s authority to declare national-security tariffs. In doing so, lawmakers would be reasserting Congress’ authority over trade policy, established by the Constitution but ceded over the years to the White House.
The legislation has stalled in Congress this spring. But on Tuesday, Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said the bill would be ready “pretty soon.” Given “how the president feels about tariffs,” Grassley said, “he may not look favorably on this. So I want a very strong vote in my committee and then, in turn, a very strong vote on the floor of the Senate.”