Trump Putting Tariffs on Scotch Now
The Trump administration slapped 25% tariffs on French wine, Italian cheese and single-malt Scotch whisky — but spared Italian wine, pasta and olive oil — in retaliation for European Union subsidies on large aircraft.
. . . .
Still some Italian foods — Parmesan Reggiano, Romano and provolone cheese — were hit with tariffs as were Italian fruits, clams and yogurt. Also getting new tariffs are German and British camera parts, industrial microwave ovens, printed books, sweet biscuits and waffles.
This should be great for American businesses.
Robert Tobiassen, president of the National Association of Beverage Importers, said the new tariffs on whisky, liqueurs and cordials, and wine from certain EU countries, would hit many of the United States’ 12,000 importers hard.
“These tariffs will devastate, perhaps destroy, many small and medium sized family businesses importing these products into the United States,” he said.
Oh.
Jacob Levy, a professor of political theory at McGill University, wrote on Twitter the tariffs were “an interesting strategy for lowering the trillion-dollar deficit: increase everyone’s need to drink to get through each day’s news, then tax the heck out of the good alcohol.”
It’s OK. Trump (claims he) doesn’t drink, so no skin off his nose.
[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]
They take my untaxed bottle of Lagavulin when they pry it out of my cold, dead fingers.
Chuck Bartowski (bc1c71) — 10/3/2019 @ 7:54 amThis whole thing in international trade law, allowing retaliation agsinst arbitrarily picked imports, is very unfair.
Sammy Finkelman (00fff5) — 10/3/2019 @ 8:05 amAfter repayments by auto manufactures, the great recession auto bailouts cost about $14 billion. Subsidies to farmers hurt by tariffs are twice that ($28 billion) and I figure there’s a 0% chance that any amount will be recovered.
Davethulhu (fab944) — 10/3/2019 @ 8:06 amTell me how the eu is not oceania:
https://www.politico.eu/article/facebook-europe-court-justice-defamation-content-plaform-liability/
Narciso (d1f714) — 10/3/2019 @ 8:09 amNo tariffs on quiche and Perrier?
These things are not important to anyone. The gourmands can afford them and normal people don’t use them.
nk (9651fb) — 10/3/2019 @ 8:15 amOmg, not Irish cheese. He must be impeached for this alone:
Dana (05f22b) — 10/3/2019 @ 8:15 amWell he followed the wto, now under what authority does eu put up trade barriers, i hought we had free trade
Narciso (d1f714) — 10/3/2019 @ 8:19 amAh yes the days of ‘funenployment’ when everyone was sober.
Narciso (d1f714) — 10/3/2019 @ 8:29 amTrump said US wine is better than French wine. This is proof that he doesn’t drink.
AZ Bob (885937) — 10/3/2019 @ 8:33 amI just boarded the impeachment train.
JVW (54fd0b) — 10/3/2019 @ 8:36 amWell dont watch cbc which licks trudeau clean.
Narciso (d1f714) — 10/3/2019 @ 8:47 amThe Romans taught the French how to make wine. Maybe after another 2,000 years, they’ll get it right.
nk (9651fb) — 10/3/2019 @ 8:54 am“Trump said US wine is better than French wine.”
He ain’t alone and it ain’t actually news.
https://learn.winecoolerdirect.com/judgment-of-paris/
harkin (58d012) — 10/3/2019 @ 8:56 amYes letting them in, was such a good idea:
https://mobile.twitter.com/Jkylebass/status/1179706365641666561
Narciso (d1f714) — 10/3/2019 @ 8:56 amAmerican cheese makers are immensely under rated. All dairy states produce superb artisan cheese. Local Goat cheese can be a real treat. Worth a drive to the country.
mg (8cbc69) — 10/3/2019 @ 9:16 amNarciso, I thought you were referring to this.
urbanleftbehind (862c37) — 10/3/2019 @ 9:44 amWell he could be an agrieved huguenot, you never know.
Narciso (d1f714) — 10/3/2019 @ 9:54 amBlessed are the cheesemakers…
Matador (39e0cd) — 10/3/2019 @ 9:56 am“Not Irish cheese”…Well if the USMCA agreement that Trump negotiated to replace NAFTA were to finally get ratified, I understand that Canadian cheese was once all the rage…
We have seen thee, queen of cheese,
Lying quietly at your ease,
Gently fanned by evening breeze,
Thy fair form no flies dare seize.
All gaily dressed soon you’ll go
To the great Provincial show,
To be admired by many a beau
In the city of Toronto.
Cows numerous as a swarm of bees,
Or as the leaves upon the trees,
It did require to make thee please.
And stand unrivalled, queen of cheese.
May you not receive a scar as
We have heard that Mr. Harris
Intends to to send you off as far as
The great world’s show at Paris.
Of the youth beware of these,
For some of them might rudely squeeze
And bite your cheek, then songs or glees
We could not sing, oh! queen of cheese.
We’rt thou suspended from balloon,
You’d cast a shade even at noon,
Folks would think it was the moon
About to fall and crush them soon.
-James McIntyre, 1866
PTw (894877) — 10/3/2019 @ 10:05 am“This should be great for business,” says Boeing -always a target of Euro subsidized competition- and US producers of wine, cheese, cameras and what not.
Harcourt Fenton Mudd (0c349e) — 10/3/2019 @ 10:07 amThis sunuvabiscuit must be stopped. If I don’t get my Monkey Shoulder, there is going to be a real problem.
Colonel Klink (Ret) (6e7a1c) — 10/3/2019 @ 10:08 amGood, no word on gin tariffs.
Paul Montagu (cbbfc4) — 10/3/2019 @ 10:34 amHeres a twist:
Narciso (d1f714) — 10/3/2019 @ 10:51 amhttps://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7533375/Knifeman-attacks-police-officers-Paris-police-station.html
OMG. How dare TRump protect American workers. We should just let anyone sell anything here for any price no matter how it effects the workers or the companies based in the USA. Just make sure our Economic Professors and Government workers are shielded from global competition and can pull down their Non-free market based salaries!
rcocean (1a839e) — 10/3/2019 @ 11:03 amIsn’t it funny how almost all these “Free market economists” all work for the non-profit think tanks, Colleges, and the Government. As a group, they are less involved in the “Free Market” than anyone other than Government workers and the Clergy. So, its do as I say, not as I do. I guess you can be really Libertarian and globalist, when you got a comfy job insulated from any free market.
rcocean (1a839e) — 10/3/2019 @ 11:06 amAnd no, I’m not asserting that No economists are employed by Private business. Just very few.
rcocean (1a839e) — 10/3/2019 @ 11:08 amThis is leverage ya’ll.
Now the EU and the US can start negotiating new trade deals in light of this, that could put the US in great positions.
*puts tinfoil hat on*
If Trump is serious about wanting the UK to proceed through Brexit, he can setup a very favoriable trade between US and the UK… that would then create UK as a “gate keeping” into/from EU trading.
*takes off tinfoil hat*
whembly (51f28e) — 10/3/2019 @ 11:16 amI love Kerry Gold butter and cheese, and some Irish sausage and Italian cheeses. I will still buy them qt a higher cost, though perhaps less often. Other may choose domestic alternatives; cest la vie. This is not a big deal. Tariffs are a tool to get other countries to bring their trade practices into line. For too damn long, the GOP Inc. and Chamber of Commerce types prattled on about “free trade” like it had no cost, and how any tariff was bad. And usually the US producers got the short end of things. Frankly the whining of those people about this is embarrassing. Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” is a lovely book, but it is not part of out Constitution. Smith himself would have been horrified to see his ideal of comparative advantage beaten to death by the CiC to sell moronic and destructive trade practices. Recall the US’s greatest period of economic expansion was from the Civil War until WWI, a time of high tariffs.
Bugg (47841b) — 10/3/2019 @ 11:48 amodd how they don’t mention the wto win, anywhere in the piece, they want to make this seem unrelated to anything, meanwhile oceania, keeps pressing on airship one,
narciso (d1f714) — 10/3/2019 @ 11:53 amIcelandic butter beats kerrygold any day if the week,mbut I wish there were some incentive for US dairies to produce better products.
The US dairy situation is just dreadful if you compare to the UK or Scandinavian. I can’t convince the local Publix to carry decent cream (Ultra-pasteurization and gum fillers ruin cream) let alone double cream, us dairies pack that off to ice cream factories and consumers can’t usually get it at a conventional store.
SarahW (08f5d7) — 10/3/2019 @ 12:03 pmTariffs to protect american workers good! This is what got trump elected president. Both trump and sanders beat free trader clinton in michigan and wisconsin over it and trump took ohio, pennsylvania because of it. Free traders are traitors to this country and its working class they should be arrested, tried and executed for treason.
lany (d4bc93) — 10/3/2019 @ 12:59 pmDrink domestic; eat American dairy.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 10/3/2019 @ 1:07 pmThe best Tilsit I ever had was from MN.
harkin (58d012) — 10/3/2019 @ 1:28 pmGood, no word on gin tariffs.
There are some distilleries here that are making pretty good gin: FEW, Bluecoat, and Leopold’s come readily to mind. But scotch really does need to come from overseas.
JVW (54fd0b) — 10/3/2019 @ 1:31 pmThere was a brief moment where tariffs seemed to be an acceptable gamble. They initially appeared to catch China off guard, and it led Beijing back to the negotiating table. The President should have declared victory and then moved on, but typical of this Administration they don’t seem to have been thinking more than two steps ahead, so they just doubled down. Now I’m all for challenging conventional wisdom, and Donald Trump is probably the best person to lead this challenge, but that doesn’t relieve him of the obligation to have a complete strategy from start to finish. This apparent method of winging it is not serving him well.
I see it this way. Our trading partners now know a few important things: (1) tariffs still are not all that popular in the GOP, beyond the nationalists/Trump cultists; (2) Democrats who like tariffs either have other reasons to hate Trump (e.g., public sector union members) or they are probably already secretly voting for him anyway (e.g. various trade unionists), so he’s not winning over any new converts; (3) Trump is under a political microscope and has zero chance of unifying Democrats and Republicans on a trade policy. So now our trading partners know that time is on their side, not on ours.
JVW (54fd0b) — 10/3/2019 @ 1:42 pmhttp://www.faribaultdairy.com
mg (8cbc69) — 10/3/2019 @ 2:01 pmA couple hours from hour farm. I grew up eating the blu.
Fixed.
Dave (1bb933) — 10/3/2019 @ 2:52 pmJVW:
Ah, the time-honored approach of calling for an exit strategy, just because things aren’t as smooth as a silk sheet, or they didn’t work overnight. This problem was decades in the making. If some importers have to readjust (As they expected American manufacturers to do), that’s the breaks. We’re better off having manufacturing and production here, not abroad. Did you happen to see all that Chinese weaponry the US is funding with our purchases and debt payments?
And when you’re a country bleeding from tariffs on your goods, the long game is with the buyer, not the seller.
Harcourt Fenton Mudd (0c349e) — 10/3/2019 @ 3:19 pm34: but we have bourbon here!
Harcourt Fenton Mudd (0c349e) — 10/3/2019 @ 3:19 pmNot when we can use the same resources more profitably doing something else.
Dave (1bb933) — 10/3/2019 @ 3:24 pm‘funemployment’ seems very popular, though, the way it works is Chinese have bars for entry into their market, including surrendering intellectual property, that money comes back and buys any remaining American industries, like the rare earth processors,
narciso (d1f714) — 10/3/2019 @ 3:40 pmThis Sarah Jeong Times headline alone is worth it:
How do you say “snorfle” in French?
nk (dbc370) — 10/3/2019 @ 4:06 pm15 years, back during the free trade w administration?
narciso (d1f714) — 10/3/2019 @ 4:11 pm@ Bugg, #28:
I recall that in Blazing Saddles, the newly-arrived Sheriff Bart managed to keep from being lynched by the townspeople of Rock Ridge by pointing a gun at his own head. It was one of the funniest moments in the movie. It is somewhat less humorous to see similar logic employed in the real world by a real person…evidently in all seriousness.
Granting for the sake of argument that your “economic expansion” claim is true (although I could not find a source for this claim, and would like to see one), this is still a classic example of a cum hoc fallacy. It is possible, and indeed far more likely, that the rapid industrialization taking place during this same time period was the real driver of economic expansion, and was so powerful that it swamped the negative effect of the tariffs. One wonders how much more prosperous that age might have been, if only protectionists had not been at the helm.
A tariff, as you know, is a tax placed on imports that is designed to make them less appealing to buyers, who will then be more likely to buy domestic goods. But if tariffs were economically helpful, or at least not economically harmful, to the nation that enacted them (an idea which enjoys near-universal disapprobation among economists of every stripe), surely it would be even better for that nation to pass and enforce an economic embargo on all foreign countries, forcing their citizens to purchase only domestic goods and leading to a massive domestic economic expansion. To see how well that works in practice, one should examine the US economy in the wake of Jefferson’s Embargo Act of 1807…or, for a more modern example, the thriving and flourishing economy of North Korea.
Demosthenes (6b2821) — 10/3/2019 @ 4:14 pmAh, the time-honored approach of calling for an exit strategy, just because things aren’t as smooth as a silk sheet, or they didn’t work overnight.
Uh, no, Harry Mudd. When you choose to apply tariffs, you have to plan for one of two outcomes:
1) Your trading partner folds, gives in, negotiates, and you get a desirable (or at least acceptable) outcome.
2) You are in it for the long haul.
It doesn’t appear to me that the Trump people had any inkling that (2) was a possibility, or else why now of all times would they have gone down this path. I get that you are going to defend that crew to your last breath, but you can’t convince me we have a firm hand on the tiller.
JVW (54fd0b) — 10/3/2019 @ 4:37 pmThe US GDP for that entire period, is exceeded by US GDP in 63 seconds today.
In 1900 a billion dollars was an unknowable amount of money, now it’s a rounding error on a large transaction.
Colonel Klink (Ret) (6e7a1c) — 10/3/2019 @ 4:38 pmWe’re better off having manufacturing and production here, not abroad.
I am really not jazzed by the prospect of drinking American scotch. Nor eating American bananas. And Hawaiian pineapples are excellent, but they can’t supply enough for the entire 50 states. Do you happen to like chocolate? World trade isn’t always a matter of “we’ll just make it here.”
JVW (54fd0b) — 10/3/2019 @ 4:41 pmIn 1900 a billion dollars was an unknowable amount of money
Not to be super-pedantic here, but John D. Rockefeller was worth a billion dollars (in contemporary values) in the early part of the 1900s, so it wasn’t a totally unknowable figure.
JVW (54fd0b) — 10/3/2019 @ 4:43 pm@ Col. Klink, #46:
But that’s not what Bugg was saying, I think. Economic expansion should be about rate and period of growth, not merely an absolute dollar amount. Raising your automotive factory’s annual output from one to two cars is, in that sense, a greater expansion than raising it from 10m to 15m…since you are doubling your production in the first case, and only increasing 50% in the second. In that light, I find Bugg’s claim possible, and perhaps even plausible. I just want a source.
Demosthenes (6b2821) — 10/3/2019 @ 4:56 pmJohn D Rockefeller was worth $1.4 billion when he died in 1937, which was about $24 billion in dollars adjusted to 2018. That $1.4B was 1.5% of overall the $93B GDP in 1937. Gates Family or Bezo’s families @$150B depending on the say, is 0.1% of GDP.
Here’s a graph of the growth, 1880+
Colonel Klink (Ret) (6e7a1c) — 10/3/2019 @ 4:57 pmSo Bugg may have been right about the economic expansion, it appears. The growth rate of the US economy in real GDP from 1860 to 1920 was about 738%…and the similar growth rate in real GDP from 1958 to 2018 was “only” 527%. This is based off figures from the Measuring Growth website, which was cited as the source for the graph Klink posted.
Still, the difference is not quite as impressive as Bugg made it out to be. And again, even if he is right about that, he’s still very wrong about the tariff.
Demosthenes (6b2821) — 10/3/2019 @ 5:22 pmSorry. That should just be “growth,” not “growth rate.”
Not the first time I’ve wished for an edit button on this site…
Demosthenes (6b2821) — 10/3/2019 @ 5:27 pmWe all have typos, D. I used to feel like my corrections to comments exceeded my comments. But now I think people will probably figure out what I mean. I just hope they read it.
DRJ (15874d) — 10/3/2019 @ 6:36 pmThis means that, if you drink whiskey, you’ll be better off drinking a good bourbon from Kentucky! Since, like President Trump, I don’t drink alcohol, I’ll need some of our esteemed host’s readers to take up that slack for me.
The Dana from Kentucky (2c8a87) — 10/3/2019 @ 7:03 pmAZ Bob wrote:
Well, he does eat steak . . . but he eats it well done, with ketchup. Chances are that his tastes aren’t very good.
The carnivorous Dana (2c8a87) — 10/3/2019 @ 7:06 pmI opened the comments in this thread and saw, “They take my untaxed bottle of Lagavulin when they pry it out of my cold, dead fingers.” convincing me that I could find comments by civilized gentlemen (and gentlewomen) here and that, unlike many political websites, the signal to noise ratio was going to be better than zero.
John B Boddie (11ac33) — 10/3/2019 @ 7:38 pmAnd if you really like single-malt scotch whisky and cannot stomach bourbon, it’s just tough luck for you, right?
Chuck Bartowski (a2c25f) — 10/3/2019 @ 7:50 pmReally, really good whiskey (Vintage Maryland Rye) is damn near impossible to find, but some substitutes can be pressed into service in desperate circumstances.
John B Boddie (11ac33) — 10/3/2019 @ 8:13 pmTo put a finer point on it, your post apparently makes the assumption that bourbon and scotch are interchangeable, and that drinkers of the latter will gladly switch to the former. But nothing could be further from the truth.
What’s far more likely to happen is that scotch drinkers will drink less scotch and will not make up the difference by drinking bourbon. So, the American bourbon distillers will gain no advantage from the tariff. And the importers of scotch will lose business because less scotch is being consumed.
To me, it sounds like this tariff will do more harm to some Americans (the scotch importers) than it will benefit other Americans (the bourbon producers).
You could argue that Americans will benefit by drinking less alcohol as a whole because of this tariff. But you could make the very same argument that Americans would benefit by not driving their cars so much when gas taxes are raised, and I’m pretty sure very few regulars here would make that argument.
Chuck Bartowski (a2c25f) — 10/3/2019 @ 8:30 pm‘Tariffic’ deals this week at the Kroger: spaghetti, 16 oz., box, $1; Hunt’s four-cheese pasta sauce, 24 oz., can, $1; Kroger Parmesan cheese: 8 oz., jar, $2.49.
Yum!
“Avez-vous bourbon?” – Jessie Stevens [Jessie Royce Landis] ‘To Catch A Thief’ 1955
DCSCA (797bc0) — 10/3/2019 @ 8:40 pmMay as well put in a plug here for Israeli wine.
It’s really just as good as French wine, has no tariffs, and (extra bonus points) allows you to thumb your nose at BDSers.
Kishnevi (ec71b1) — 10/3/2019 @ 8:42 pmAnd if you are a person with good taste, and really like single-malt scotch whisky and cannot stomach bourbon, it’s just tough luck for you, right?
FTFY
Kishnevi (ec71b1) — 10/3/2019 @ 8:44 pmIt is pertinent to note I am sipping a nightcap of Deanston Virgin Oak even as I post this.
Kishnevi (ec71b1) — 10/3/2019 @ 8:46 pmMay as well put in a plug here for Israeli wine.
I’m a fan of Central European wines (Hungary, Romania, Croatia, Serbia, Moldovia). I don’t have such a mature palate that I can distinguish between good wine and great wine, so at the price point that stuff is good for me (I’m lucky that I live close to a couple of really good European markets). I’ll try Israeli wine next time I see it.
JVW (54fd0b) — 10/3/2019 @ 8:55 pm1) the best selection of Israeli wines is, for obvious reasons, at kosher groceries.
Kishnevi (ec71b1) — 10/3/2019 @ 9:19 pm2) Israel produces cheap wines like everyone else. Barkan and Recanati are the Israeli equivalents of Gallo…although Barkan has a line of slightly better wines.
3) in dealing with Israeli wine, you are dealing with kosher wine, and the rules about kosher wine have an important wrinkle called mevushal
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosher_wine#Mevushal_wines
Boiled wines were thought to taste inferior to regular wine, thereby limiting the likelihood of gentiles sitting around and sharing a bottle with Jewish friends. So wines handled by a gentile are not kosher unless they are boiled, or mevushal. The difference in taste is not imaginary, so try to avoid mevushal wines. They will often say mevushal in English spelling, but always in Hebrew: מבושל.
Great info. Thanks, Kish. Looks like I have to go into the heart of Los Angeles to find a Kosher market, but I’ll put that on the to-do list next time I wander north.
JVW (54fd0b) — 10/3/2019 @ 9:48 pmSacré bleu!
Dave (1bb933) — 10/3/2019 @ 10:59 pmAnd no, I’m not asserting that No economists are employed by Private business. Just very few.
rcocean (1a839e) — 10/3/2019 @ 11:08 am
Sorry to disagree. Most of the
nk (dbc370) — 10/4/2019 @ 12:04 amapologists for rug peddlers and racketeersso-called free-market economists are bought and paid for by private business. Just not directly. Their payola is laundered through academia, publishing, speakers’ forums, foundations, think tanks, and other such devices supported by people who buy low, sell high, and want more.DCSA-that Kraft grated cheese is so not cheese it doesn’t require refrigeration; barbaric.Dry pasta is pretty much all the same, so that’s a good place to save some money. If you’re gonna go jar sauce, go with Michael’s of Brooklyn, Sunday Gravy or Marinara. A bit more expensive, but worth it.A quart jar goes for $5.99 on sale.
Bugg (ebf485) — 10/4/2019 @ 4:40 amProperly cured cheeses do not require refrigeration. Most especially not the hard, dry ones like parmesan, and also soft ones like feta as long as they’re kept in a clean environment. People have been making them and keeping them year-round for thousands of years before Mr. Frigidaire came along. That’s their purpose in the first place. To preserve the milk. It’s the fakey ones from your supermarket’s dairy cooler that do.
nk (dbc370) — 10/4/2019 @ 7:12 amTrue, but that stuff in the green can is filled with some bad preservatives. Decent pecorino romano, locatelli or parmesan will stay fine on your counter, but longer if you refrigerate it after you unseal it.
Bugg (47841b) — 10/4/2019 @ 7:27 amIs Trump lying about not drinking alcohol?
steveg (354706) — 10/4/2019 @ 9:06 amTell me how the eu is not oceania
Because it is Eurasia. The Americas are the heart of Oceania, plus Airstrip One, of course.
Kevin M (19357e) — 10/4/2019 @ 12:15 pmIs Trump lying about not drinking alcohol?
I doubt it. He is what AA calls a “dry drunk.” The behavior isn’t usually the product of the substance, but the underlying thinking.
Kevin M (19357e) — 10/4/2019 @ 12:18 pmIf Trump is lying about anything medical, it’s his deteriorating memory and cognitive abilities. I really wish that there was a mandatory suite of medical tests that were made public, both for Presidents and for announced candidates. Alzheimer’s testing would be part of it.
Kevin M (19357e) — 10/4/2019 @ 12:21 pmHe has never denied smoking crack, though.
Kevin M (19357e) — 10/4/2019 @ 12:22 pmNo eurasia is russia, oceania is western europe china/india is east asia
Narciso (d1f714) — 10/4/2019 @ 12:25 pmI haven’t denied doing peyote enemas…
steveg (354706) — 10/4/2019 @ 8:26 pmOn the off chance you are interested…
steveg (354706) — 10/4/2019 @ 8:29 pmhttp://www.strangehistory.net/2013/05/31/vision-quest-2-the-rainbow-enema/
If I were to use this method; deer bladder and femur bone, filled with peyote puree and up the wazzoo, I’d be discreet about it too Kevin M
steveg (354706) — 10/4/2019 @ 8:33 pmNew Trump hotness.
steveg (354706) — 10/4/2019 @ 8:35 pmHe doesn’t drink Scotch, he takes it up the….
bunghole
steveg (354706) — 10/4/2019 @ 9:45 pm