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By Nick Carey
Jan 27 (Reuters) - Ordering a bottle of Corona beer at a bar in the United States is a simple proposition.
Getting it there from its brewery in Mexico involves a complex, cross-border supply network that will likely get more complicated if U.S. president Donald Trump follows through on vows to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or tax imports.
Trump has not outlined specific plans for revising NAFTA, but he has made repeated calls for a levy to discourage companies from moving jobs outside the United States. On Thursday, the White House floated a plan to impose a 20 percent tax on imports. Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives have included a tax on imports in their blueprint for overhauling corporate taxes.
The ideas have met opposition in Congress, even inside Trump's own party. U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, a republican from South Carolina, took to Twitter on Thursday, saying "Simply put, any policy proposal which drives up costs of Corona, tequila, or margaritas is a big-time bad idea. Mucho Sad."
Trump's rhetoric has also heightened uncertainty over the billions in supply chain and infrastructure investment that a diverse array of companies from automakers and railroads to appliance makers and food producers have made on both side of the U.S.-Mexico border during the past two decades.
The stakes are high for brands like Corona, which is entirely brewed in Mexico, and the transport companies such as Union Pacific Corp that make money moving the beer's raw ingredients and packaging into Mexico, and bringing the finished brew back to the United States.
Victor, New York-based Constellation Brands Inc, which owns the U.S. rights to Corona, plans to spend $2.5 billion to expand an existing brewery in Nava, just south of the border with Texas and $2 billion on a new brewery in Mexicali by 2021.
Just days before the November 8 U.S. election, the company said it would buy a Mexican brewery from Grupo Modelo for $600 million and expand its operations in the country.
To qualify as a Mexican beer, Constellation's beer brands must be made in Mexico. However, about 40 percent of the cost of the company's Mexican beers are tied to ingredients, supplies and freight services that come from the United States, said David Klein, Constellation's chief financial officer during a conference call earlier this month.
The company - which has seen its market valuation triple to nearly $30 billion since 2013 when it obtained rights to sell Corona and other Mexican beer brands - imports hops, barley and other grains from the United States to brew Corona. The company does not disclose the specific origin of ingredients.