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Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone has vowed to never drink a beer from local adult beverage maker Samuel Adams. The personal boycott comes in response to chairman Jim Koch's support of President Donald Trump.
Koch, the founder of Sam Adams brewer Boston Beer Company, met with the president on Aug. 7th to discuss the recent tax cuts. One of 13 corporate executives invited to the president's Bedminster, New Jersey golf course, the sixth-generation brewer thanked President Trump for the corporate tax break, which he says has already helped American beverage makers compete against foreign companies.
"When I started Sam Adams, American beer was a joke, and it pissed me off," said Koch, according to a White House transcript. "And now, American brewers make the best beer in the world. And the tax reform was a very big deal for all of us, because 85 percent of the beer made in the United States is owned by foreign companies."
“We were paying 38 percent taxes and competing against people who were paying 20... And now we have a level playing field, and we’re going to kick their ass.”
Curtatone, an outspoken Trump critic, took to Twitter to announce his boycott of the local beer company. "I will never drink Sam Adam's beer again!" Curtatone wrote, linking to a Boston Business Journal story about Koch's comments. "We need to hold these complicit profiteers of Trump's white nationalist agenda accountable !"
The eight-term Democrat went on to criticize Trump's "inhumane immigration enforcement policy," questioning why Koch didn't call the president out for his actions during a rare face-to-face meeting.