Duties on wine and diplomacy: Unione Italiana Vini (Uiv) meets Minister of Foreign Affairs Tajani

Waiting to understand if Trump's duties will really hit wine and how (hypothesis fearing both European producers a lot, firstly Italy and France, and US trade, as we wrote here), diplomacy is looking for a solution. The President and secretary general of Unione Italiana Vini (Uiv), Lamberto Frescobaldi and Paolo Castelletti, met, yesterday, at Farnesina (The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation) Minister of Foreign Affairs Antonio Tajani. On the table, obviously, the theme of duties for wine and alcoholic drinks at 200%, which actually zero not only the first end market for Italian wine (1.9 billion euros in 2024) but, they would involve damage to the entire European sector of wines and alcoholic drinks.
“We asked the Minister of Foreign Affairs Antonio Tajani  - said Frescobaldi -  to exclude wine and alcoholic drinks from the trade debate linked to the duties on steel and aluminum, also because an European sector exporting a value of 8 billion euros a year would be hit, in front of an import of the same products from the USA of 1.35 billion euros. A request that the Minister is committed to present tomorrow, in Brussels, during the meeting with European Commissioner for Trade Maros Sefcovic”. According to the secretary general of Unione Italiana Vini (Uiv) Paolo Castelletti, “the announcement, on March, 13th, of duties at 200% is already strongly influencing the market which is actually already blocked with American importers who suspended the orders. For this reason, an urging resolution in the headquarters of EU is needed”.
Unione Italiana Vini (Uiv), explains a note, “considers as inopportune the inclusion of trade debate of categories of products in which “the play to loose” is evident with a ratio of 6 out of 1 to the disadvantage of Europe. An imbalance which, according to Unione italiana vini, risks to bring the sector down, wine sector, which, in Italy, is worth 1.1% of the Gross Domestic Product (Gdp) with an added value overcoming 17 billion euros with a weight corresponding to 40% (1.93 billion euros) of the total Eu export in the USA”. At the meeting with Minister Tajani, Uiv (Unione Italiana Vini), as it already did in the past, expressed in favor of the ratification of the agreement of free trade of Mercosur.