This year’s trade fair season has just begun. Thousands of Italian wine professionals have been attending ProWein in Germany over the weekend. Vinitaly, our industry’s main event, and the satellite progressive fairs are coming up in a few weeks.

In any other year, it would be a time for planning, strategizing, networking, and the goliardic camaraderie that accompany the season.

Instead, our industry — across the board — is holding its collective breath as we await the tariffs announced on social media by our despotic president.

According to the most recent data, Italian wine sales in the U.S. have grown by more than 150 percent over the last two decades. In 2023 and 2024, despite industry-wide challenges, Italian wines sales continued to grow in the U.S., the world’s largest consumer of fine wine. Last year, nearly $2 billion of Italian wine were sold here.

Think of the small- or medium-sized businesses like scores of Italian wine importers I know operating in the U.S.

If you are an importer that has a “container on the water,” as the parlance goes, you will potentially owe a 200 percent tax on the entire bill of lading. You can’t just turn the container back. Beyond the big players in big wine, behemoth tax bills like this are going to take many operators down for good.

In the best of times, some of them might be able to make it to the fourth quarter (and potential tariff relief) when most actors account for 50 percent or more of their total sales.

But these are not the best of times: changing consumer habits, consolidation by big wine, and soaring production and logistics costs have been suffocating Italian-wine focused small business. And not just importers and distributors. For those restaurant owners and retailers who rely on Italian wine as part of their brand, the disruption in the flow of wine from Europe will create extreme havoc and severe pain.

Right now, all we can do is wait to see what plays out between Trump and the EU. In the meantime, please remember to support local and regional businesses by drinking a bottle of Italian wine this week. Thanks for your support and solidarity.