Duties, EU and US stall until mid-April. But tensions in the wine business remain high

The 200% U.S. duties on wines and Champagnes from France and Europe threatened by Trump, if Europe really introduces countermeasures on the 25 % U.S. duties on EU steel and aluminum, still, are just words, although they are already causing quite a few problems in the U.S. market, which is crucial, with U.S. importers stopping shipments to avoid the risk of seeing bottles arrive that, if at the time of customs clearance they were affected by the duties, would become very expensive and difficult, if not impossible, to place on the market. These days, while the sector is obviously in turmoil (as also emerged yesterday at the Vinitaly 2025 preview in Brussels), many, as done by the president of the Ice Agency, Matteo Zoppas, to WineNews, or by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Antonio Tajani, on several occasions, are preaching caution, reminding that duties, in fact, except for those on steel and aluminum, are not there, and that diplomacy is at work to avert a trade war that would harm everyone. And, in the meantime, a first very small, albeit significant, result is that the European Union has stalled, postponing by a couple of weeks the entry into force, compared to the initially planned April 2, of the retaliatory duties on U.S. products (included in the list - which to date is the same one used in 2000 for the Boeing-Airbus dispute - is American whiskey , the “casus belli” for which Trump threatened duties on European wines and spirits, ed.), scheduled from early April, as announced yesterday by European Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovic.
A move, of course, to stall and give diplomacy time to work, also depending on what the US will actually do, which is in trouble on some issues such as the not insignificant one of the egg crisis for which it has asked (for now with little success) for extraordinary shipments to some EU countries, and which already with Mexico and Canada, after bombastic announcements and countermeasures taken by the affected countries, has backtracked almost all the way down. A postponement to give a way to negotiate with less frenzy, then, to be taken with a grain of salt anyway, as always in these cases, as commented also by the Us Wine Trade Alliance itself, which a few days ago strongly advised importers to stop all shipments from the European Union, waiting to see what will happen. “This morning (yesterday, ed.), the European Union announced a postponement of retaliatory tariffs on bourbon, whiskey and other products from the United States until April 13. We have just received confirmation that the U.S. response - including retaliatory tariffs on wine and other spirits from the EU - will now be delayed until April 14. This is a good first step to lower the temperature and hopefully give the U.S. and the EU time to come to a negotiated solution on the underlying issue. While we certainly welcome the news, the current state of “purgatory” in the industry is still tremendously damaging to companies across the United States”, explains the association led by Ben Aneff. He adds, “Currently, the EU seems to underestimate the willingness of the United States to respond forcefully to any attempt by the EU to retaliate against steel and aluminum tariffs. We expect the U.S. to impose tariffs on the E.U. at twice the value of any retaliation to steel tariffs, but of course we are urging the administration to ensure that such tariffs are thoughtful to keep the damage away from U.S. businesses and limit the damage to the EU. As we know, wine tariffs harm U.S. businesses significantly more, making them unnecessarily harmful to U.S. interests and a poor lever to influence policy change. The wine industry can be a model for the fair trade the United States desires, benefiting businesses on both sides of the Atlantic and supporting hundreds of thousands of American jobs. While we hope that the U.S. and the EU will be able to resolve the underlying issues, in the event of a dispute, retaliatory tariffs should be limited to products that primarily benefit EU companies. Wine duties are bad for America. I know this has been a stressful week for all of us. We hope to have more news soon, and we continue to work every day to tell the story of our amazing industry to policymakers in Washington. Thank you for your help and support”, the letter closes. Which comments on another chapter in an affair, that of tariffs, in which nothing is yet written, which no one likes, not even in the U.S. wine business, as we wrote here, and whose end everyone wants to see as soon as possible.