This is one of my favorite wines, Chateau Margaux. It currently sells for about $700. However, if Trump's tariffs go through, this will be $1,800 or more. So if you love Bordeaux as much as I do, listen up.
Hey, everybody, this is Greg Martellotto at BigHammerWines.com. Today I want to talk about wine tariffs and what it means for you, the wine lover. Watch the video here
So we've been down this path before. In the first Trump administration, he instituted a 25% tariff as a penalty for the digital services tax. Basically, European countries were penalizing technology companies from Silicon Valley in particular with a digital services tax. And there was another disagreement as it related to EU subsidies to support Airbus — the airplane manufacturer that is the competitor ofr Boeing.
They were targeted specifically at France and Germany, the leading countries for those tariffs. The US tariffs targeted wines above 14% alcohol. And guess what? Suddenly a lot of wines were relabeled, and there were very few wines being imported from France at 14% or above. Go figure. So where there's a tariff, there's a way to evade it, I guess.
A 25% tariff is a huge impediment and will impact our ability to buy more of those wines — and probably your desire to buy and drink those wines yourself.
Now, it’s worth recognizing — Big Hammer Wines has been around 16 years now. We’re a volume online player, and we sell direct to consumers around the country. And we do our own direct importing. So this directly impacts our business.
That being said, the idea that taxing Burgundy or Barolo or Bordeaux is going to transition the customers who drink those wines to California wines, I think is false.
These wines just don’t exist in the US. We don’t produce them. They’re very difficult to replicate given the incredible millennia of history and terroir in Europe.
So here’s how I think this ends: I think this will end up probably around this 25% that we had before. And I think tariffs will raise the cost — your cost, our costs — for buying these wines we love from Europe.
I don’t see it as a long-term strategy or solution. I feel like inevitably there will be a reprieve and, I hope, rational minds prevail.
The other thing to know is that there is an agreement in place currently that sunsets the tariffs until 2026.
Let’s hope that the remainder of 2025 falls back to acknowledging the Trump administration’s first tariff agreement from 2019
But he’s clearly signaled that the free trade era is over. And these are products Americans want, love, need, and, you know, cannot find suitable replacements for because they’re unique and special.
Buy those wines now before free trade sunsets forever.
So if any of this makes sense and you’re interested in following along as we live in the wine world every day, please subscribe or share this video with anyone you know who is a wine lover.
Cheers.
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