Donald Trump is to become the 47th president of the US following an inauguration in January 2025, and his election victory this week has put the possibility of fresh tariffs on wine and many other goods in sharper focus.
Trump told Bloomberg on the campaign trail that ‘tariff’ was his favourite word.
It remains to be seen how campaign talk will translate into a wider set of economic policies, and there are other issues affecting parts of the wine world, such as falling consumption.
Anti-tariff lobby group the US Wine Trade Alliance reiterated its view last month that higher levies on imported wines harm consumer choice and saddle domestic firms with higher costs.
Writing in the Wine Industry Advisor publication, USWTA’s president, Ben Aneff, also said it was a ‘misconception’ that consumers would swap foreign wines for domestically-produced bottles.
The US was the world’s biggest wine-importing country by value in 2023. Shipments dropped 11% versus 2022, but were still worth nearly €6.2bn, according to the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV).
Only Germany and the UK imported more wine than the US in volume terms, OIV data showed.
European trade associations were keeping an open mind following Trump’s election win.
Miles Beale, CEO of the Wine & Spirit Trade Association (WSTA) in the UK, said there were some ‘clear concerns’ based on Trump’s first term, including tariffs related to wider trade battles.
‘On the other hand, there is the opportunity of a US-UK free trade agreement,’ Beale added.
France’s wine and spirits exports body, FEVS, congratulated Trump.
It called for ‘constructive dialogue’ between the US and EU, and emphasised the strong relationships between wine and spirits businesses on both sides of the Atlantic.
During Trump’s first term as president, the US and EU (plus UK) launched tariffs on some wines and spirits imports, relating to broader trade disputes – including tussles over state aid for aerospace industry giants Airbus (EU plus UK) and Boeing (US), as well as steel and aluminium.
In 2021, FEVS said ‘Airbus taxes’ had ‘caused American imports of French wines to drop by €400m’ during 2020.
The aerospace dispute was paused for five years in 2021, after the Biden administration took office, but no permanent solution was agreed.
Meanwhile, the US Distilled Spirits Council warned last month that EU tariffs on American whiskies could ‘snap back’ at a higher rate of 50% from March 2025 – the current deadline for a paused-yet-unresolved dispute over steel and aluminium subsidies.
Wine and spirits producers are no strangers to being caught up in trade spats. Earlier this year, China lifted punitive tariffs on Australian wines that had been in place since late 2020.
