Small breweries and distilleries will receive a big tax break under the new tax plan. NPR’s Ari Shapiro speaks with Lynne Weaver of Three Weavers Brewing Company.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Now we’re going to hear about another industry that benefits from this new tax law. Small craft breweries get a big tax cut. Lynne Weaver is the founder of Three Weavers Brewery in the Los Angeles area. Coincidentally, she also has a background in tax policy. She joins us now from the brewery. Welcome to the program.

LYNNE WEAVER: Thank you for having me.

SHAPIRO: Describe the change and how you’ll be taxed under this new law.

WEAVER: The excise tax is based on a per-barrel production. So it’s whatever we package and send out of our brewery. We pay $7 per barrel of beer. It ends up making up close to 15 to 20, sometimes even 25 percent of our total cost of our beer. So the reduction in that tax is going to be greatly beneficial to us because it reduces our overall cost of goods.

SHAPIRO: Reduction from $7 a barrel to about what?

WEAVER: The new reduction is down to $3.50 a barrel.

SHAPIRO: And that’s only for breweries that produce less than a certain amount of beer. So the big brewers don’t get as big of a cut, right?

WEAVER: That is correct.

SHAPIRO: So if the excise tax is basically cut in half for you, how much money will that mean for you in a typical year?

WEAVER: Next year when it’s actually going to take place, our goal is to produce 10,000 barrels, so it’s going to be quite a bit of money for us. It’s going to be close to $21,000. That’s a part-time person. It allows us to hire somebody else. It helps quite a bit.

SHAPIRO: You say it’s enough money to hire a part-time person. Is that what you plan to do with the money?

WEAVER: Yeah. I think that for most small breweries, the area in which is the most fluid in needing capital is really in labor. Once you buy equipment, the equipment is pretty much what it is. You have the capital outlay. But to fill those tanks requires a person to be able to brew.

I think a lot of craft breweries have to stretch their staff because they just don’t have the funds available to be able to bring on somebody else to alleviate the workload. But having, like, the additional funds from the excise tax reduction will allow us to be able to bring somebody else in.

SHAPIRO: Some people are critical of lawmakers choosing specific industries to benefit, choosing winners and losers. Obviously you have the advantage of being a winner here, but do you have any hesitation about certain industries getting a boost and other industries not?

WEAVER: Well, to be totally honest, the craft beer industry hasn’t had a boost in a very long period of time. If you look at how long the excise tax has been around for, there has never been a change. It’s always been at $7 a barrel for beer. So if anything, the craft beer industry has been at a disadvantage with this excise tax.

SHAPIRO: You say the craft beer industry has not had much relief lately, and yet it’s done very well. Five years ago, there were about 2,000 craft brewers in the U.S. Last year, there were 5,000. It doesn’t sound like an industry that needs a lot of tax relief.

WEAVER: Well, that’s skewed. So the vast majority of the breweries that are opening today or even are open are probably 3,000 barrels or less in production and really service a very small community. So you can’t really look at it in the sense of how many breweries are opening because it doesn’t necessarily mean that all of them are yet profitable. So if anything, those smaller breweries really do need this tax break just to be able to continue supporting their communities, creating those jobs.

SHAPIRO: One principle of taxation is that you should have higher taxes on things that you want people to do less. That’s why there are cigarette taxes and some places have soda taxes. By that rationale, could somebody argue that beer makers should be taxed more, not less?

WEAVER: We’re talking now about vices – essentially vices and the excise tax or luxury taxes, right? Well, one of the things about craft beer – it’s not just about beer. It’s about what we provide within our communities, the job creation – all of those things. So if those are tied to what somebody considers a vice, then, you know, it’s like, you’ve got to kind of balance those two items. And really, I really believe that it negates the negative side as long as we are always responsible.

SHAPIRO: Lynne Weaver is the founder of Three Weavers Brewery in Southern California. Thanks so much for joining us.

WEAVER: I appreciate it. Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF VAMPIRE WEEKEND SONG, “OXFORD COMMA”)

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

European Union leaders have agreed to discuss the process by which the U.K. will leave the EU. The talks focus on the trade relationship Britain will have with the EU in the future. Guest host Ray Suarez speaks with NPR’s Frank Langfitt about whether Brexit has entered a point of no return.

RAY SUAREZ, HOST:

Last year, the United Kingdom kicked off an era of uncertainty in the Western world when it voted to leave the European Union. Yesterday, the U.K. took a major step forward on the road to Brexit when European leaders agreed to talks with the U.K. on a new trading relationship with the EU. To make sense of yesterday’s decision and how it fits with the turbulent last year and a half, we turn to NPR’s Frank Langfitt, who’s just returned to his post in London from Brussels, the headquarters city of the European Union. Hi, Frank.

FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Hey, Ray.

SUAREZ: Why does the agreement to have trade talks matter so much?

LANGFITT: Well, one thing, it sort of tells the U.K. is continuing to move forward towards leaving the EU. This is continuing to go ahead. But, you know, if you look at the – kind of the big picture, it’s symbolic of changes that really started in the summer of 2016. And a big change has happened since then. You remember that Brexit vote? It was a big shock. Stocks dropped around the world. And one reason was seeing the U.K. actually walk away from something that it had helped build – this sort of Western post-World-War-II architecture for peace and prosperity in Europe. And seeing it walk away, really, and saying basically, you know, we’re better off on our own, that really rattled people here and elsewhere.

And then you had these right-wing populists in France and the Netherlands, they were pushing to leave the EU. And there was this fear in Brussels that, you know, this 28-nation trading bloc was actually going to fall apart and risk a lot more instability in this part of the world.

SUAREZ: I’ve been in Britain a couple of times since the vote and talked to people at each time who felt that there was still a chance that it might not happen. How does the decision look today and has it entered a sort of point of no return?

LANGFITT: Well, that’s a great question. I mean, first, it’s not going well at all. You know, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May is much weaker than she was. So Brexit has ended up really kind of tearing up politics here. In terms of a point of no return, that’s an excellent question. There is a sense here that if they tried to do it, people would be so upset because this came out of a referendum, and they would feel that this was denying the democratic will of the people here in the United Kingdom.

On the other hand, you talk to people in the EU, they might welcome them back if they changed their mind. But they only have so much time. You know, this is all going to run out. They have to leave in March of 2019. But everybody’s going to be watching it very closely. And I think key to it also will be the economics of the United Kingdom, which has been suffering since the Brexit decision.

SUAREZ: Now to state the obvious, but it’s never a bad idea. The U.S. is not a member of the EU. Why should Americans be paying attention to Brexit? Does it mean anything on this side of the Atlantic?

LANGFITT: I think it does in a way that people wouldn’t necessarily imagine, and that’s that Brexit is weakening America’s closest ally abroad. You remember, you know, we fought a war with the Brits. We speak the same language, have these shared values. And with President Trump looking inward himself, you know, the U.S. influence is declining worldwide as well as this very important power of ours. Then if you look more broadly, you’ve got a more aggressive China, a more assertive Russia. And there is a sense that one thing the West doesn’t need right now is fragmentation.

SUAREZ: Once the British have managed to extricate themselves from the EU, will they be looking to make a deal with the United States?

LANGFITT: They do. And, you know, it’s really interesting. Theresa May keeps saying, oh, this is going to bail us out. We’re going to do really well with a deal with the U.S. The fact of the matter is trade barriers are already very low with the U.S. And you’re – she’s also going to be dealing with Donald Trump who’s not known for giving, you know, sweetheart deals to people. He crafts himself as a very, very tough negotiator. So the idea that the U.S. economy is going to really help out Britain, I think most people here – certainly, economists think that’s not very likely.

SUAREZ: That’s NPR’s Frank Langfitt in London. Thanks a lot, Frank.

LANGFITT: Happy to do it, Ray.

(SOUNDBITE OF ADAM BEN EZRA’S “CAN’T STOP RUNNING”)

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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This week on All Things Considered, we’re sharing a series of “Highly Specific Superlatives.” Cardiff Garcia from NPR’s podcast The Indicator talks about the most important economic indicator in 2017 that everyone ignored: global trade.

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

There are a few economic indicators that got a lot of play this year – the unemployment rate, the GDP the Dow. Now we’re going to talk about another economic indicator as part of our series Highly Specific Superlatives, in which we nerd out about the best, the worst, the least, the most of 2017. NPR’s Cardiff Garcia co-hosts NPR’s newest podcast The Indicator. It’s about the big ideas behind business news. And he is with us now. Hey.

CARDIFF GARCIA, BYLINE: Hi, Kelly.

MCEVERS: So hit me. What is your highly specific superlative from 2017?

GARCIA: My highly specific and also highly nerdy superlative is the most ignored indicator that actually says a lot about the economy – the global economy. It’s the pace of growth in global trade, the pace of growth in how much we buy and sell goods and services across borders to and from other countries.

MCEVERS: OK, global trade, yeah.

GARCIA: Yep.

MCEVERS: Tell me about it. Like, what’s – give me a little snapshot of what that indicator tells us.

GARCIA: I love this indicator. And the snapshot is that it’s growing a lot. The IMF projects that by the end of this year it will have grown 4.2 percent. That is a big acceleration on last year. And I think what I love most about this superlative is that it contrasts so starkly with the headlines that we’ve seen all year about the world turning inward and about protectionism and about countries becoming more self-reliant. I love that this just kind of goes so starkly against that narrative.

MCEVERS: Well, yeah so – OK, explain that because, I mean, you know, I think a lot of people think, like, we’re pulling out of trade deals. We’re tightening borders. We’ve you know, scrapped deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and threatened to tear up NAFTA and all of that stuff. So, like, how does this square with all that?

GARCIA: Yeah. So I guess the simple answer here is that so far at least, there’s been more talk than action. So yeah, we’ve threatened to pull out of NAFTA, but NAFTA is still in place. We did leave the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but keep in mind that the other 11 countries are still going ahead. And so what we’ve learned is also that the U.S. isn’t the only country that matters here, that this is global trade, not just U.S. trade with everybody else – and so…

MCEVERS: Right.

GARCIA: …More talk than action. And also, we’re learning that maybe the U.S. isn’t the only place that that counts here.

MCEVERS: OK. How do we want to think about this going forward?

GARCIA: Yeah. I mean, this is a – it’s a complicated narrative. If you think about it, it’s not like right now if you make a product in another country and then you send it to a country to be bought and sold, that that’s the way things still work. That’s sort of the old world, right? Now the way it works is that as a product gets made, it passes through a bunch of different countries, and each country has a process or a factory that adds a component or a new way of making it by the time it gets to its final destination to be sold.

And so even if you make it hard to do business with, say, Mexico, well, OK then, the factory and that process just shifts somewhere else. It’s like this big supply chain gets redirected. And so what we’re seeing now is that it’s just really, really hard to deconstruct that process. The world is very closely integrated, and it’s not easy for any one or two places to just turn that away.

MCEVERS: NPR’s Cardiff Garcia co-hosts The Indicator. It’s a podcast about the big ideas behind business news. Thanks a lot.

GARCIA: Thanks, Kelly.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Congressional Republicans are working to merge House and Senate versions of a GOP tax bill. They’re hoping to reach their first major legislative milestone by Christmas.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

There is furious work going on behind the scenes on Capitol Hill so that Republicans can meet their goal of passing a final tax bill before Christmas. The House and Senate passed separate measures over the last few weeks. Members of both chambers will meet formally in a conference committee later this week to hammer out a final bill.

But a lot of that negotiation is well underway, and NPR congressional reporter Kelsey Snell has been keeping watch on Capitol Hill, where she joins us now. Hi.

KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Hi there.

SIEGEL: How close are we to seeing a final tax bill?

SNELL: Republicans I talked to say they are very close, but there is a lot still up in the air. They’ve been working behind closed doors all weekend to try to hash out these differences. The goal is to resolve any issues before they formally meet later this week. But there are a lot of fixes that need to be done.

SIEGEL: Yeah, in order to get the Senate bill passed, there were a lot of deals cut with individual Senators. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin wanted benefits for small businesses. Susan Collins of Maine wanted money to shore up the health care market. Are any of those concessions at risk as all this gets negotiated or renegotiated between the House and the Senate?

SNELL: Yeah. There were actually three main agreements during that last-minute haggling. And as of now, they all appear pretty solid. First we talked about Johnson and the small businesses. They really wanted to make sure that there were better breaks for small businesses to keep them better in line with corporations. Those kinds of protections have lots of support in both the House and Senate, but the two bills disagree on the best way to structure those benefits. So it’s unclear right now which side will prevail.

The second one, the deal with Lisa Murkowski of Alaska which involved oil and gas exploration in the ANWR, which is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge – that also seems pretty solid. She is on that conference committee, and so is Congressman Don Young of Alaska. So they’ll have a lot of power.

And last, there’s Maine Senator Susan Collins. She says she’s confident in an agreement she reached with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to vote on funding to help the Affordable Care Act exchanges. Here she is speaking to CBS’ “Face The Nation.”

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “FACE THE NATION”)

SUSAN COLLINS: I’ve talked to the president three times about this issue. And once again, I have no reason to believe that that commitment will not be kept. After all, who wants to see health insurance premiums become more unaffordable than they already are for individuals who are buying insurance, say, in the individual market?

SNELL: So there’s a lot to take in here, but Collins hasn’t fully committed to voting for the tax legislation. But it does seem clear that the health care measures will likely be part of the year-end spending bill that also needs to get done in the next two weeks.

SIEGEL: Now, it’s been said that the – most of the benefits in the tax bill would go to businesses. Would that change as they’re making these fixes this week?

SNELL: Actually from what I’m hearing, the bill could get better for some businesses. According to my reporting, a major issue, though, is how to handle a parallel minimum tax system for businesses. Companies have been pushing really hard to see that that is repealed. But it was kept in the Senate bill. Getting rid of it could cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and cost is incredibly important here. There are also some more esoteric issues like clearing up a potential conflict with the World Trade Organization. But all that is being worked out right now.

SIEGEL: And the middle-class tax cuts Republicans have promised – will those change?

SNELL: So first and foremost, the focus is still on lowering rates and doubling the standard deduction. But there’s a lot of talk about those state and local taxes that we’ve been hearing about. One option being discussed would be to let people deduct up to $10,000 of any state and local taxes they pay, not just the property deduction that’s allowed under the Senate bill.

SIEGEL: Well, NPR’s Kelsey Snell at the Capitol, thanks.

SNELL: Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF RATATAT’S “NOSTRAND”)

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.