EXCLUSIVEHold the Prosecco! Family Italian wine importer facing $1million tax hit Thursday thanks to 'terrible' Trump tariffs
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A fourth-generation importer of Italian wine and spirits won't be popping the Prosecco on 'Liberation Day' when Donald Trump's tariffs around the world are set to go into effect.
Stock markets have plummeted worldwide as Trump prepares to hit foes and allies alike on April 2.
The food and beverage industry is preparing for massive price hikes due to Trump's threatened retaliatory 200 percent tariff on the 'hostile and abusive' European Union targeting champagne and alcohol.
It comes after the EU raised tariffs on American goods including whiskey.
Dina Opici said her family import and distribution business is set to get hit with a $1 million tariff on three containers worth of goods. The goods themselves are valued at only about $500,000.
'If there’s a 200 percent tariff on that, we would have to pay $1 million to be able to get those goods from the port,' she told DailyMail.com as the shipments make their way to the U.S.
Opici is trying to make sense of her family business plan after putting a stop on all further imports until the situation is settled.
'That payment's due upon arrival,' she said. 'Those goods are not saleable. There's no person who's going to pay 200% more for that product.
'We're going to pay a million dollars to get half a million dollars a product that I will never be able to sell,' she said, calling it a 'terrible' circumstance as she tries to suss out what to do with her incoming Prosecco, Pinot Grigio, and Chianti.
Dina Opici, president of Opici Family Distributing, says her company could get hit with a $1 million tariff on a three container shipment set to arrive the day after new tariffs hit
That shipment has the misfortune of arriving on the first day when Trump has said his 'reciprocal tariffs' will take effect across the board. Trump says the tariffs will hit back at foreign countries he accuses of ripping off the U.S., while boosting U.S.-made products and industries.
It's not clear how tariffs would play out in the U.S. market.
'You can't make Tequila in the U.S. So if you want to be able to offer Tequila, you get it from Mexico. If you want to sell Champagne, you can only get it from France, right?' said Opici, whose grandfather started the business by importing barrels of wine from his Italian homeland.
'There's a uniqueness to the wine and spirits industry from a product standpoint,' she explained. 'It's a little bit different when you're talking about zippers or auto parts.'
Other shipments are bringing in Aperol and Campari, raising the prospect of rising costs for popular spritzes and Negronis just as the warm weather hits. 'These are products that are not replaceable,' she said. Americans downed more Prosecco last year than they did French Champagne for the fist time ever.
Wine and spirits are already suffering a difficult year amid changing habits and economic concern. Trump imposed the threat amid a series of escalating threats. It came after European countries said they would slap a 50% tax on U.S. whiskey after new tariffs on European and Canadian steel and aluminum took effect.
Two days after 'Liberation Day', she has 30 purchase orders coming in.
Amid the uncertainty, Opici's company halted all shipments immediately after Trump issued the 200% tariff threat, even though he has backed down from similar threats in the past.
Wine importer Dina Opici has three containers of product set to arrive the first day the Trump tariffs take effect
Opici, who is chair of the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America, says other importers are following the same playbook, with dozens facing similar strains.
'We have paused shipments from Europe at the moment, pending visibility to the direction of the tariff. We obviously can't impact goods that are already on the water. Those goods have been ordered 30, 60, 90 days ago,' she said.
Another importer, who brings Tequila from Mexico, has already absorbed a painful hit.
'They're basically sitting on probably the most expensive shipment of Tequila in the United States to date right now,' said Michael Bilello, vice president for communications at the group.
Importers must commit to prices in advance when they accept shipments in the heavily regulated industry, giving the tariffs extra sting
President Donald Trump says he will impose reciprocal tariffs on April 2
That importer, who didn't want to be named, had the misfortune to bring in a large shipment during the 72-hour window when Trump imposed and then lifted tariffs amid talks in a complex game of chicken with the governments of Mexico and Canada.
The company paid the tariff before it got lifted. Now they're sitting on this Tequila, and now the market price goes back down because tariffs are no longer in place. There's no recovering from that,' said Bilello. The company is facing a seven-figure hit, he said.
'Post and hold' regulations in the heavily-regulated industry also require wholesalers to maintain prices that they file with regulators in many states – which would lock-in pre-tariff prices in some cases.
Another importer, Cutter Smith of Connecticut-based Eder Bros, fears the hit his Scotch shipment coming in will take.
Two shipments heading to the East Coast from Scotland are set to land in the next 72 hours. They were scheduled to land on 'Liberation Day' – but there is uncertainty at sea and at ports of entry. A difference of a day could be costly.
'You don’t know when they’re going to be unloaded, there’s a lot of moving parts,' he said.
The situation makes him 'uneasy,' in part because he is already 'locked and loaded' on prices he has filed with state liquor authorities that he isn't allowed to raise.
If a container brings $180,000 worth of high-end Scotch, a 200% tariff suddenly boosts the cost to $540,000. 'It becomes unsellable,' Smith said.
'If you’re a Scotch drinker, no matter how hard you try, you can’t get it from Nebraska. If you like a Bordeaux, it’s not coming from New York State,' he added.
The fear and anxiety in the wine and spirits industry comes despite Trump and top trade advisor Peter Navarro branding the day day the tariffs take effect as 'Liberation Day.' Trump is planning an event in the White House Rose Garden to celebrate.
Navarro spoke enthusiastically over the weekend about the time President Lyndon Johnson imposed the 'chicken tax' on foreign makers of light trucks – giving a boost to domestic production.
'And we saw almost immediately that the imports here of Volkswagen vans, the old hippie van, started going down and what happened was we had this -- this just renaissance of light truck development,' he said.
The tariff is still in effect more than 60 years after it began in 1963.
Trump cheered the approach of the tariff at the White House Monday. 'This is going to be an amazing — I call it a lot of different names — but it really in a sense is a rebirth of a country,' he told reporters.
