From champagne to bourbon, alcohol lands on front lines of global trade war
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Alcohol has landed on the front lines of a global trade war, throwing French wines, Irish whiskeys, Kentucky bourbon, Japanese beer and Mexican tequila into the crossfire between the U.S. and its biggest trading partners.
In the Canadian province of Ontario, liquor stores have cleared their shelves of California wine and Tennessee whiskey, replacing them with local varieties and signs declaring: “For the good of Canada." A restaurant wine director in Washington state is dreading the arrival of shipping containers full of European wine so expensive it’s unsellable. The Kentucky governor is pleading for the survival of his bourbon industry. And makers of American sparkling wines are poised to make a windfall.
President Trump on Thursday opened a new front, threatening a 200% tariff on U.S. imports of all alcoholic beverages from the European Union. Trump’s salvo was a response to the EU’s decision to move forward on a 50% levy on American whiskey.
Thursday’s escalation caused panic on both sides of the Atlantic. The EU exported wine worth more than $5 billion to the U.S. last year, according to EU data agency Eurostat.
Almost half of that came from France and about 40% came from Italy. A 200% tariff would push many bottles on store shelves above the $20 range that many American wine drinkers find acceptable, said Lamberto Frescobaldi, patriarch of the Italian winemaking dynasty that spans 30 generations. Above that price range, he said, “most people probably are not going to buy." Remi Cohen, chief executive of the small California producer Domaine Carneros in California’s Napa and Sonoma counties, was sitting in her hot tub Thursday morning when she saw the tariff headlines on her phone
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