It remains a perilously weird time to buy, sell, make, or drink wine in America. The global pandemic, the unprecedented climate change events, the ongoing devastation to the restaurant industry—all these would be bad enough. But there’s one big top-down fuck-you squeezing the wine industry from all sides, and that’s the lingering impact of Donald Trump’s trade war and associated wine tariffs.
You’ll recall these tariffs, levied at 25%, as posing a sort of existential threat to the wine industry back in early 2020, before Coronavirus said “hold my wine-beer” and taught us a thing or two about metaphysical dread. Those tariffs are still here, and in fact, increasing, reports Market Watch: