Champagne, France – Throughout the country of wine in France, Italy and Spain, a number is the most important thing: 200%.
That’s because last week President of the United States Donald Trump threatened tariff of that amount in European wineChampagne and other spirits if the European Union continued with retaliation rates in some American products. The best wine producers in Europe could face paralyzing costs that would affect the smallest wineries especially.
The European wine industry is the last to be in the sights of a possible commercial dispute with the United States.
Among those interested are David Levasseur, a third generation wines producer and owner of a champagne house in the homonymous region of France.
“It means that I am in trouble, big problems. We hope it is, as we say, blah, blah,” said Camsseur, standing at his champagne house while sliding a flute of the bubbling of his vineyard. “When someone speaks so strong,” said Trump’s threat on the threat of 200%, “it is the media. But in any case, we believe there will be consequences.”
Like other wines and export sellers, Camsseur said that a 200% tariff on what exports to the United States essentially will stop its business in that country.
“It could be a real disaster,” said Camsseur.
Italy, France and Spain are among the five main wine exporters to the United States. Trump made his threat to the European alcohol industry after the European Union announced a 50% tax on the US whiskey that is expected to take effect on April 1. That duty was presented in response to the Trump administration. Tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum.
Gabriel Picard, who runs the French Federation of Wine Exporters and Spirits, said that 200% of tariffs would be “a hammer blow” for the France industry, whose exports of wines and spirits to the United States are worth 4 billion euros ($ 4.3 billion) annually.
“With 200% tasks, there is no more market,” said Picard.
Even so, he understood why European leaders responded to Trump’s initial tariffs.
“There is no debate about that. We agree that Trump creates and likes to create strength contests. We have to adapt to that,” he said.
In Italy, the wine industry has requested calm, hoping that negotiators in Brussels and Washington can go back to the growing commercial dispute.
The United States is the largest wine market in Italy, and sales have tripled value in the last 20 years. Last year, exports grew by almost 7% to more than 2 billion euros ($ 2.2 billion) according to the main agricultural hall of Italy Coldiretti.
Strong sales in high -end restaurants, in particular, make the US market difficult to replace, said Piero Mastoberardino, vice president of the National Association of Federvini winemakers.
The red wine “Taurasi Radici” of Mastrbardino, for example, was qualified as the fifth best wine in 2023 by Wine Spectator, an American wine and lifestyle magazine. It is sold for around $ 80 per retail bottle in the US, approximately twice as much as it costs in Italy, so any rate will take it to an “unthinkable price,” he said.
In January, American import import partners increased orders by approximately 20% in January anticipating possible Trump rates. But the increase in orders would not compensate for the impact of tariffs, particularly that high, said, for a long time.
“It is of interest to everyone to keep a united front at the negotiating table,” Mastoberardino said, “especially those who are being attacked.”
Wine producers and industry experts in Spain, whose soft reds are savored by dozens of millions of American tourists who visit the country in southern Europe every year, shared similar concerns about the possible tariffs.
“We do not believe that they have a lot of logic and we hope that it will never come to fruition,” said Begoña Olavarría, an economic analyst of the interprofessional organization of the wine of Spain.
Spain was the fourth largest wine exporter to the United States last year in sales, and the largest seventh by volume, according to the commercial group. Spanish wines exports to the United States grew 7% last year. And the wine industry represents approximately 2% of the general economic production of the country, the commercial group said.
For the producers of Cava in Spain, the threat of American tariffs hit especially hard. The United States is the largest market for Spanish bubbling wine, which like Champagne has a designation of origin, which means that it can only be done in Spain.
Mireia Pujol-Gusquets owns the High Warehouse Allella located in Cava Country, south of Barcelona. Founded by his family in 1991, he said that his business and his 40 employees immediately run the risk of losing sales of about 25,000 bottles if the US market closes.
“We spend 10 years of effort opening the US market, finding distributors and building a brand,” he told the AP on the phone.
While the Catalan winery and its distributors in the US. Uu could absorb the increase in prices induced by the Trump 25% rate on the wines during their first mandate, Pujol-Gusquets said that it is “completely irrational” to consider eating a 200% increase.
“The situation is quite desperate,” he said.
___
Naishadham reported from Madrid. Associated Press Joseph Wilson journalists in Barcelona, Spain; John Leicester in Paris; and Colleen Barry in Milan contributed to this report.
