US President Trump has threatened Germany with 200% tariffs on wine. Vintners are fearing for their US market, where German wine has a reputation and a customer base.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Konstantin Richter is heading to his vineyard in the Mosel Valley, which has been in his
00:05family for ten generations. He grows Riesling grapes here, and his family has been exporting
00:11wine to the United States since 1830. Today, around a third of the vineyard's wine goes
00:17to the U.S. But now Richter is deeply concerned about President Trump's threat of imposing
00:22tariffs of up to 200 percent on EU wine import.
00:27We're exporting over 30 percent of our output to the U.S., and if there are 200 percent
00:33tariffs on that, that entire business would go bust. 200 percent on top of everything,
00:38nobody would buy that anymore.
00:41The crisis has hit German vintners at an already difficult time. They're facing high labor
00:46costs, complex bureaucracy, and rising global wine production, which is pushing prices down.
00:53German wines have remained competitive due to their high quality and excellent reputation,
00:58but now it's becoming harder to maintain profits and sales. Trump's tariff threat has soured
01:03the atmosphere at Germany's largest wine trade fair in Dusseldorf, with many fearing a collapse
01:08in revenue.
01:11These tariffs would be catastrophic for the German export, especially since the U.S. is
01:16our biggest foreign market. We make a sixth of our entire profits there, so it would hit
01:22us extremely hard.
01:26Trump previously targeted German wines with 25 percent tariffs in 2019. German exporters
01:33and U.S. importers shared the extra costs and managed to weather that crisis. However,
01:39tariffs as high as 200 percent would be hard to swallow, if not impossible. For some, however,
01:46the glass is still half full, and they're trying to hold on to some optimism.
01:54A full-on trade war between the U.S. and the EU can still be averted. The EU has announced
02:00reciprocal tariffs starting April 1st, but until then there's still time to talk, and
02:05both sides should come to realize that a trade war would hurt everyone and that a deal should
02:11be negotiated.
02:14At his vineyard, Konstantin Richter is also hoping for compromise and more active support
02:19from the government.
02:21When Trump initially announced these 200 percent, high-level politicians and secretaries of
02:27state immediately had statements out in France and Italy. Just here in Germany, we haven't
02:32heard much from the government.
02:35German winemakers have survived many crises before. Right now, they're hoping to weather
02:40this one, too.