Leave wine out of the trade wars

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If you are one of the many millions around the world who love to drink great wine, there has never been a better time in history to do that.

And it’s thanks to millions of people involved in the growing, making, transporting, importing, distribution, retailing, and serving of fine wine. Their work with wine also sustains huge numbers of families and helps drive entire economies through hundreds of billions of dollars of spinoff economic activity.

So it makes me extraordinarily sad that wine is being sucked quickly into a vortex of global trade wars. And I believe that we will all be the worse for it. And people are going to get hurt.

I’m not qualified to discuss the details of the broader industrial and technology trade disputes that led the United States in October to impose a 25 percent tariff on French, Spanish, German, and UK wines.

Or that led in early December to a formal US proposal to impose an extra 100 percent duty on French sparkling wine, beginning early next year. Or, more importantly, that triggered official consideration by the United States of an additional 100 percent import tax on all European wines, also starting in January.

But I can’t help but think of the human cost the proposed tax would have on so many people in the United States and Europe. Disruption on this scale would tear apart much of the wine world that I care deeply about. And you probably do too.

Making fine wine is about years—or decades, even centuries—of agricultural planning, planting, investing, construction, and risk taking. Markets, whether for American or European wines abroad, take decades to develop. Entire patterns of taste and demand depend on availability and cost of wine. We all appreciate a good bottle of wine at a fair price.

It’s easy to see how some might think wine taxes could be a useful tactic in fighting trade battles in other areas. But it is hard to see how anyone’s interests actually could be advanced by the disruption and uncertainty caused by even the threat of such massive wine tariffs.

They would cause huge numbers of people in the US and Europe to lose their jobs. If prices double, consumers—all of us—would lose choice, in a way unequaled since prohibition.

This is all why I believe wine deserves a special plea for measured and thoughtful consideration, and forbearance, in these trade wars. Many historians have noted that production of wine from grapes coincided with the emergence of modern civilization roughly 10,000 years ago, and I can see through living in Hong Kong, the United States, and Italy, what an important contribution wine has made to human commerce, culture, and creativity. Let’s not lose sight of that.

If you agree, this is a good time to let your political representatives know how you feel. But do so quickly. Readers in the United States can go to congress.gov/contact-us to see how to contact their members of Congress. Or submit your views electronically to the Office of United States Trade Representative, which is taking public comment until January 13 on the proposed 100 percent tax on all wine from the European Union.