Market conflict turned cunning against noted distiller (5,3)

'noted distiller' is the definition.
I don't know anything about this answer so I cannot tell whether this works.

'market conflict turned cunning against' is the wordplay.
'market conflict' becomes 'dewar' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'turned' says the letters should be written in reverse.
'cunning' becomes 'art' (I've seen this in another clue).
'against' says to put letters next to each other.
'art' in reverse letter order is 'tra'.
'dewar' put after 'tra' is 'TRADE WAR'.

Can you help me to learn more?