Europe’s Dangerous Short-Sightednes
After his China visit in December 2025, President Emmanuel Macron said Europe might need “strong measures … such as tariffs.” In the grey zone between tariff rhetoric and geopolitical short-sightedness, Europe’s wine ends up on the table as well — the reason for my comment: “Between Brussels, Paris, Beijing and Washington: why a bottle of wine has become the wrong bargaining chip.”
There is an unspoken hierarchy in politics: “strategic” is what sounds like a chip plant; “cultural” is what smells like a wine cellar. In that hierarchy, wine has a problem. Yet wine is not just culture. It is foreign trade, agriculture, landscape stewardship, tourism, and identity. Above all, it is an export good that runs on a currency no statistic can fully capture: trust.
Eurostat shows the hard economic substance behind the romance: in 2024, the EU exported alcoholic beverages worth €29.8 billion to non-EU countries — €16.8 billion of that was wine. So when we talk about “wine,” we are not talking about a charming side story, but about a structural export pillar. Which is exactly why it is so unsettling how casually wine and spirits have been pulled into trade skirmishes in recent years: as symbol, message, pressure tool — in short, as collateral.
How escalation works today: not logical, but effective
Trade conflicts rarely start with wine. They start in industries where dominance is at stake: technology, subsidies, market shares. The current EU–China dispute is a textbook case. Following its anti-subsidy process, the EU imposed tariffs on China-made battery-electric vehicles — and both sides have since been discussing alternatives such as minimum-price arrangements. You can read that as legitimate protection against distortion, if you want …
But retaliation does not have to be “symmetrical.” It has to be political: pick sectors that are visible, that hurt, and that generate domestic headlines. That is where the wine-and-spirits world becomes vulnerable. It is prominent, it has faces — families, regions, stories — and it is much easier to illustrate in a news feed than the mechanics of a subsidy regime.
Cognac as the warning sign
China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) opened an anti-dumping investigation into EU brandy on 5 January 2024. In July 2025, duties of up to 34.9% were confirmed, alongside minimum-price commitments that effectively give breathing space above all to major players.
One bitter lesson remains for the industry: the damage does not begin with the tariff rate. It begins with uncertainty. Launch plans slip. Budgets freeze. Importers hesitate. Marketing loses its rhythm. Wine lives on continuity — and continuity is the first casualty of escalation.
The line from Paris — and Europe’s side effect
Into this sensitive moment came a message that understandably heightens exporters’ anxiety. Reuters reported on 7 December 2025 that Macron said Europeans might, “in the coming months,” be forced to take “strong measures … such as imposing tariffs.”
Whether Macron was scoring points domestically, in Europe, or strategically is almost secondary for wine exporters. What matters is this: such lines increase the likelihood that Beijing responds the way it already has — selectively, symbolically, effectively.
This reveals a European structural problem that goes beyond Macron. In practice, national capitals often speak “European.” Third countries may not hear “Brussels,” but “Paris” — and still respond “European,” meaning measures that hit European sectors. Wine then becomes the projection surface of an EU unity that does not always exist politically — but will be paid for economically.
Washington: the bigger market — the bigger cliff edge
If Europe stares only at China, it misses the other jaw of the vine-press. Reuters reported on 13 March 2025 that Donald Trump threatened 200% tariffs on EU wine and spirits.
And the United States is not just any customer. It is the EU’s largest destination for alcoholic-beverage exports — €8.9 billion in 2024. Against that backdrop, any additional escalation with China becomes doubly risky: it does not only endanger access to one major market; it also weakens Europe’s leverage in another.
What Europe must learn — if it takes wine seriously
The core failure is not that Europe pursues trade policy. The failure is pursuing it while refusing to price in the cost paid in vineyards. Europe can defend itself. But Europe must stop tolerating wine and spirits as convenient negotiation currency — in rhetoric and in practice.
A minimum of professionalism, paired with realism, would mean rhetorical discipline and protection against collateral damage. Wine and spirits must not become standard ammunition in unrelated conflicts — neither from Brussels nor in predictable counter-moves. Macron has no blank cheque to gamble with Europe’s wine market. Anyone who speaks for “Europe” must organise European cover, must stabilise predictability — also for the wine sector — otherwise exporters become extras in a political storyline.
Wine is patient. Markets are not. Protecting Europe’s export culture is not nostalgia; it is protecting an economic core — and a piece of European credibility. You can order tariffs. Trust has to be earned. And trust, in the end, is the most valuable vintage in export business. Perhaps that is the uncomfortable punchline: Europe loves to talk about soft power. In wine, it has it. It should finally stop squandering it.
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Sources: Reuters, European Commission, english.mofcom.gov.cn
Photo Credit: Adobe Stock/Premium
