Wine: if US duties were confirmed at 10%, Italy would lose up to 190 million euros

Luca Rigotti, president of the FedagriPesca Confcooperative Wine Sector, spoke yesterday at the Agriculture Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, together with the AGCI-Agrital and Legacoop Agroalimentare organizations, part of the fact-finding investigation into the prospects of the wine sector. “If the 10% wine export tariffs to the United States were confirmed by the Trump Administration, the medium/long-term impacts for Italian wineries would be devastating. According to Confcooperative estimates, to date, the tariffs would mean an 8-12% loss in export volumes and up to 190 million euros loss in value”, Rigotti said.
“The American market”, Rigotti continued, “is the main export market for Italian wine, boasting a turnover that reached 1.94 billion euros in 2024 (+10.2% on 2023). We, as a Cooperative system, therefore, are hoping for an urgent and strong diplomatic action, “based on constructive dialogue, which eases tensions”, starting with not including American productions of wine and other alcoholic products on the list of products the European Union Commission has drawn up as possible countermeasures”. Considering the challenging economic scenario and the continuation of international tensions, President Rigotti also requested larger exemptions and flexibility for OCM Wine measure promotion to Third Countries. In detail, he requested greater financial allocation dedicated to promoting European wine on the US market, administrative flexibility to remodel projects if the US market actually becomes prohibitive to market European wines, and definitively removing the 5-year limit of information and promotion campaigns for wines on non-EU countries markets.
The President of the FedagriPesca Confcooperative Wine Sector then described the results of the High Level Group established by the EU Commission’s work for the wine sector. The work consisted in a series of recommendations shared at the administrative and organizational level of European companies and producers, and which now will hopefully be translated into effective and rapidly available measures.
The Confcooperative especially“ hopes that greater financial flexibility will be introduced to manage the various measures, and that the resources, allocated to the sector and not spent by the Member State, will be allocated to a National fund to be used immediately to manage any crises in the sector (grubbing, distillation, green harvesting)”. Rigotti continued, saying hopefully“ that Cooperatives will be equated to SMEs for the purposes of investment measures and will work towards implementing tools to ensure production also in the wine sector, considering the now repeated effects of calamitous phenomena”.