Europe welcomes the new President of the US, Biden. What will change in the wine world?

America has turned to a new page. Following four years of Republican administration, the presidential elections were the most voted ever, probably the most important in recent decades, to elect the Democrat Biden to the White House. He was born in 1942, moderate, and starting from Saturday he is definitely going to be the 46th President of the United States, hailed with a huge sigh of relief. To the many protagonists of American wine journalism, the feeling is common, and on their social profiles, they shared clear satisfaction in learning that the Trump era is at the end.
What will change for Italian wine with the new tenant of the White House? It is not easy to say, especially since there are still two and a half months before the inauguration, but it is rational to expect at least a return to more relaxed relations between Washington and Brussels. This could lead, for instance, to a shared solution on the “bloody” issue of tariffs, which just today saw the EU speed up, ready to follow the spiral in which the US and the EU have been entwined in the past few years.
The danger is that strategic but “weak” sectors, in terms of protection, like wine, always on the American blacklist and partially affected, of which French neighbors are well aware, as over the last year they have seen their overseas shipments collapse. Taking the cynical path, in the first 8 months of 2020 Italy sent 1.16 billion euros of wine to the US, 2.3% more than in the same period in 2019, which is also because of France’s export difficulties. In a more encompassing logic, America is not only strong, but it is also capable of returning to the center of the world chessboard, which is vital for Europe. On the other hand, Europe risks being isolated and cut off from the Russia-China axis, narrowing the field to wine, which are not yet, and who knows if they will ever become, reference markets for wine exports. In the meantime, as we wait for the inauguration of the new President, the projected change in the management of the pandemic is already a good start. Bringing peace back to the country and rebuilding a climate of trust benefits everyone, on at least two levels. Optimism always pushes the growth of consumption, and overcoming the pandemic in the entire Western world could finally bring tourist flows back to normal, which, easy to imagine, would benefit the economies of European countries - Italy, Spain and France, above all.