U.S. and EU agree to suspend wine tariff

The 25 percent European wine tariff is suspended for four months while the two sides negotiate an agreement

The United States and European Union have agreed to temporarily suspend the 25 percent European, the two sides announced Friday afternoon.

The wine tariff reduction is part of a larger suspension of all the tariffs, including those on food and spirits, reports The New York Times. As noted here way too many times, the tariffs were part of a long-running dispute over subsidies to aircraft behomeths Boeing and Aiirbus.

President Biden and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, agreed in a phone call to suspend all tariffs imposed in the dispute over subsidies given to Boeing and Airbus for at least four months.

I’ll update this as more news becomes available.

March 4 post: The BBC is reporting this morning that the U.S. has agreed to suspend tariffs on some U.K. goods, including single malt whiskies, that were imposed in retaliation for European Union aircraft subsidies dating to October 2019. This seems to be is the first substantial movement by the Biden administration to end the foolishness — and 25 percent wine tariff — over the Airbus-Boeing dispute.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that, since Brexit, the UK is no longer part of the European Union. So suspending the whisky tariff doesn’t necessarily mean the U.S. will do the same thing for taxed French, Spanish, and German wine. It’s also worth noting that the BBC story doesn’t say the U.S. suspended the tariff on British wine, also part of the original aircraft parts dispute.

Update: The statement from the U.S. doesn’t mention wine, though Shanken News Daily says the British wine tariff was also suspended.

In addition, says the BBC, the U.K. had dropped its tariffs on some US goods on Jan. 1. So this may be nothing more than a goodwill gesture in response to that.

So should we get excited that there’s hope for an end to the wine tariff? Perhaps not excited, but a reason for optimism after not having any for more than a year. I’ll update this story as more becomes available.