Ep. 2524 Tariffs and Trade with Blake Gray of Wine Searcher | Masterclass US Wine Market

The other thing I think politically that again, I don't wanna go too deeply into this on a short podcast is John Roberts, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, is very aware of the role of the court in history. He's been deferential to Trump, and that's also part of the philosophy of being conservative. He let the president do what the president can do. But I believe Roberts is looking for a case to draw a line because Trump has been breaking has been passing boundaries. That's who he is. That's that's who he was as a businessman. That's who he is as a president. He will go past any boundary until you stop him. And I personally think Roberts was looking for a good place to draw a line, and I think this is the best place. Hello. Welcome to MasterClass US Wine Market with me, your host, Giuliana Colangelo. This show has been designed to demystify The US market for Italian wineries through interviews with experts in sales and distribution, social media, communications, and so much more. We will quiz each of our esteemed guests in every episode to solidify the lessons that we've learned from the episode. So sharpen your pencils, get out your notebooks, and join us this week to learn more about The US market. Hello. Hello. Welcome to MasterClass US Wine Market. Today, we're diving back into one of the most pressing and sometimes controversial topics facing our industry today, tariffs. There have been some Supreme Court hearings this past week of November 3 here in The US, so we're rejoined by Blake Gray to catch up on the latest news. As a reminder, Blake Gray is The US editor of winesearcher.com, a longtime wine writer and contributor to many other great industry publications as well. Blake, thank you for joining us back on the show today. Really appreciate it. Glad to be here. Awesome. So to our listeners today, we're gonna focus on the tariffs, and we're excited to learn from Blake about the evolution of the tariffs on imported wine and Italian wine specifically and and what comes next. So our three key takeaways for this conversation today are number one, what is the status of the tariffs as of today, 11/07/2025? An explanation on how tariffs are currently impacting The US wine market, imported wine, and Italian wine, and what tariffs mean for the future of Italian wine in The US market in particular. So, Blake, let's just dive right in. What's the latest update? What happened this week? Okay. So I am probably gonna make the listeners happy, but I've been covering the court case, the lawsuit, which was led by an, US wine importer, Voss Elections, against Trump and his tariffs. I think that Trump is gonna lose this one in court. I think it's gonna be a significant loss for Trump. It will be the first time the Supreme Court has really stood up to him in his second term. We can go as deeply into the politics and the legalities of that as you want because, I didn't anticipate this when I started writing about wine, but I could give you five minute background on the philosophies of every supreme court justice individually if you want. But in any case, the legal argument for Trump simply isn't that good for these tariffs. It's better for the tariffs. He's got, in my opinion, a better argument for the tariffs on Mexico and Canada and China. His argument for the tariffs against Europe, I simply don't think it's gonna stand with the Supreme Court. The constitution gives the US Congress specifically the the power to lay and collect taxes. That is what is going to be decided in the court. Is this a tax or is it not a tax? If it is a tax, then Trump can't just willy nilly go over to Europe and negotiate country by country as he's been doing. The politics of it, a lot of people, especially on the left, like to say that Trump controls the Supreme Court because he said three of the nine judges are his nominees. I think two of his three nominees are going to go against him on this, and I think his first appointee, the single most, arguably, the most conservative member of the court is gonna go against him. That's Neil Gorsuch. And the reason is that Gorsuch when you talk about conservative, conservative has a lot of meanings. I would argue I don't wanna get too deeply into this, but Trump's not conservative at all. Gorsuch is a true conservative, and he believes in the constitution. He believes in the language of the constitution, and he was making that point very strongly. I listened to some other court cases. I'm not sure I've ever heard Gorsuch be so aggressive against the administration. So I think not only is he gonna vote against it, I think he's possibly gonna write the verdict. And the other thing I think politically that again, I don't wanna go too deeply into this on a short podcast is John Roberts, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, is very aware of the role of the court in history. And he's been deferential to Trump, and that's also part of the philosophy of being conservative. He he let the president do what the president can do. But I believe Roberts is looking for a case to draw a line because Trump has been breaking has been passing boundaries. That's who he is. That's that's who he was as a businessman. That's who he is as a president. He will go past any boundary until you stop him. And, I personally think Roberts was looking for a good place to draw a line, and I think this is the best place. So I think the tariffs on Europe specifically are going down. I'm not as sure about the ones on China and, Canada and Mexico, but I think tariffs on Europe are going down. Now what that means now Trump has other means of imposing tariffs as we remember from his first term, but that that's gonna take a lot longer. He's gonna have to go to the US trade representative. He'll have to say Europe is being unfair on digital service taxes, which is probably the number one thing. He can still bring back the Airbus dispute, but I think he'll do digital service taxes. And he can say Europe is being unfair on these, and therefore, we need to impose tariffs on European products to make up for this unfair treatment by Europe. And I think he can win this case, but let's say he makes this case and wins it. Well, remember from the first term, they'll have to list a specific number amount that The US is losing because Italy has a digital service tax, and then we'll have to come up with a number of products to say, okay. These are the products we're gonna tariff to make up for this amount of money. I think there's a very good chance wine will be not part of that group. I think Trump learned this in his first term. The US wine industry and restaurant industry coalesced around, The US Wine Trade Alliance. They make the point very strongly that for every $1 worth of Italian wine exported to The US, US companies make $4.52 because it goes through importers, distributors Right. Either a retailer also a wholesaler, either a retailer or a restaurant. Trump doesn't care about every business, but he cares about restaurants. So I think to the extent that restaurants can lead this call to leave wine out of it, I think there's a very good chance that it will succeed. So that is my very good news. This is all just speculation on my part, but I believe that Trump's tariffs on Italy are going down in total. And I think there's a very good chance that when he tries to reimpose them, he will leave wine out. Well, that is certainly good news. We know it's and I'll reiterate it. This is speculative for now as we wait for final decisions. But I think, Blake, from everything you said, you're you're backing up with a lot of clear rationale. Like you said, the Supreme Court is looking for an opportunity to make an example in a sense, and perhaps we're getting lucky if you wanna put it that way that this is the case they chose to make an example of. So fingers crossed, we get some good news. Do you have any sense of more specifics, including when we might know more as well as were there any di