Published by the U.S. Wine Trade Alliance on Saturday:

On April 2nd, President Trump will make an announcement regarding reciprocal tariffs. Previously, the thinking in Washington had been that this date would see a set of instructions or other actions initiated, as the time necessary to determine truly reciprocal tariffs (including non-tariff trade barriers) would be many months.

Now, it seems the administration may not be looking to enact truly reciprocal tariffs between products or sectors, which would take time to determine, but will instead use a single rate for each country or trading block. There has been reporting that Commerce Secretary Lutnick indicated to the EU that reciprocal tariffs somewhere between 10% and 25% could now be imposed as soon as April 2.

We have spent the last several days in Washington D.C., asking members of Congress, and staff at USTR and Commerce, to keep tariffs off wine. Likewise, we have stated clearly how catastrophic April 2 would be for American businesses if they imposed tariffs without a notice period or goods-on-the-water exception. While we have no guarantee, we are hopeful any tariffs imposed would allow for businesses to receive the goods that were already in transit without a damaging surprise tariff.

Uncertainty is a frustrating yet defining element of this process, and we understand how truly damaging this is to your businesses. We know that many of you have halted all shipments of wine from the EU, as we are still in purgatory, waiting for the forthcoming announcements from the EU and the U.S. regarding steel tariffs and any potential retaliations that could impact our industry. American businesses are suffering right now, and the administration will need to work hard to right the ship. Policies that prevent American businesses from generating the revenue they need to survive are incredibly harmful.

We will keep you updated with details as we have them. The next few weeks will be incredibly stressful for our industry, but we are all in this together.