US wine industry bets on Trump’s re-election: $606,000 to the President’s campaign

If in Italy we have been discussing for decades about public funding for parties, in the United States, the home of the free market and almost perfect bipartisanship, it is private individuals and companies who pay for election campaigns, supporting, in a transparent way, this or that candidate, and sometimes both, to facilitate the activity, also legal and regulated by law, of lobbying. It is not surprising, therefore, that the wine sector has also financially supported Donald Trump’s rise to the presidency in 2016, continuing to finance the campaign and electoral committee in the following years, until today, and then at the next elections, which in November will see him against the Democrat Joe Biden.

Despite the amount of criticism, both on the international front, with relations with China reduced to a minimum and those with Europe, after the duties that have affected entire production sectors, far from idyllic, and on the domestic front, where the clash and distance from anti-racist protesters are increasingly evident, so much so that certain statements have ended up provoking alive and planetary indignation, Donald Trump’s first financier linked to the world of wine is Marvin R. Shanken, editor and publisher of “Wine Spectator”, who donated $185,800 to the tycoon cause. John Jordan, CEO of Californian Jordan Winery, contributed $75,600; Roger K. Bower, the owner of Westerly Wines, contributed $55,400; Sheldon Stein, president of the Texan Southern Glazers Wine & Spirits, contributed $25,400; and J. Scott Beckendorf, CEO of Wine Consultants, contributed $22,883.

What is most striking, remaining on the funding for the campaign for the presidential elections in 2020, is that Donald Trump raised $606,131 from the wine world, from 239 donors for a total of 1,228 payments and an average of $494, compared to $71,567 raised by Bernie Sanders (from 218 different supporters, for 1,905 payments of $38 each on average), who lost the Democratic Party primary to Joe Biden, who received just $10,000 from the wine industry, from a single supporter... In short, the U.S. wine industry seems to bet on the re-election of “The Donald”, perhaps the most divided and criticized of the U.S. presidents in recent decades, which, however, has the numbers of the economy and labor, fundamental in the U.S. political diatribe.