We interrupt our recent string of posts about AI infrastructure costs to go back to tariffs and trade war pressures — because those are still a thing, as evidenced by today’s earnings release from liquor maker Brown Forman Corp. ($BF).

The headline is that revenue for the company’s most recent quarter (its fiscal Q2 2026, ending on Oct. 31) declined 5 percent from the year-ago period to $1.04 billion. Operating income dropped 10 percent to $305 million, and EPS was down 14 percent to $0.47 percent

Dig beneath the surface, however, and we quickly find that tariffs are driving a significant portion of those declines. 

First is this narrative disclosure in the earnings release:

In a challenging economic environment, net sales in the Developed International markets declined 4% (-6% organic), though improved sequentially. The decline was driven by the absence of American-made beverage alcohol from retail shelves in most of the Canadian provinces and lower volumes of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey in Germany and the United Kingdom. The decline was partially offset by the positive effect of foreign exchange, new agency brands in Japan, and the benefit from transition to owned distribution in Italy.

“Developed International” is a geographic segment Brown Forman defines as Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, France, and Germany, plus assorted smaller markets grouped into an “Other” designation. As you can see from the above disclosure, sales for this segment declined by 4 percent in the most recent quarter.

OK, but how much is that in dollar terms? Brown Forman’s earnings release doesn’t disclose that number, but the company does disclose geographic segments in its full 10-Qs — so with some elementary sleuthing and Calcbench tools, we can figure it out.

First we opened the Segments and Breakouts page to search for Brown Forman’s geographic segment disclosures in its fiscal Q1 2026 quarter, which ended on July 31. As you can see in Figure 1, below, the company had $257 million in sales for the Developed International segment.

Second step: we ran the same search for the Developed International segment for Q2 2025, one year ago. That number was $289 million — and since this quarter’s numbers declined by 4 percent from one year ago, that means Q2 2026 sales for the Developed International segment must be $277.4 million (which is 4 percent less than the $289 million from one year ago). 

Presumably this will be proved true when Brown Forman files its full 10-Q in coming weeks. Our point is simply that even without the 10-Q, you can piece together a rich disclosure picture by pulling together data from the earnings release and prior 10-Q disclosures. You just need the right tools. (Read: Calcbench.) See Figure 2, below.

O Canada Segment

We were also curious about Canada sales specifically. Canadian liquor stores removed Brown Forman brands from their shelves earlier this year in retaliation for Trump Administration tariffs on Canadian goods. (Most liquor outlets in Canada are run by the provincial governments, so yes they can do this.) 

The bad news is that Brown Forman doesn’t report sales numbers for specific countries. It does, however, report sales growth or declines for specific countries. The declines for Canada are so steep they’ll blow your teque off. See Figure 3, below.

That’s a 62 percent decline in Canada sales in the six months of April through October 2025. Ouch. 

We know that Brown Forman’s total revenue for the first six months was $1.96 billion (that’s from the earnings release); and the Developed International segment accounted for roughly $566.4 million in that same period, which is 29 percent of total revenue.

Alas, we can’t tell how much Canada itself contributes to total revenue, which is a shame, because Canada’s trade retaliations could well be the factor that is pushing Brown Forman’s growth into decline.