Canada loves American wine. That’s no overstatement—the nation of 40 million to the north spends about $1.1 billion annually on U.S. wine, much of it from Northern California wine country. Unfortunately for the local wine industry, that dollar amount will be a lot closer to zero for 2025 if the Trump administration’s tariff policy holds steady, as Canadian provinces have enacted boycotts across the board of U.S.-made alcohol in response to a potential levy of 25%.
The Great White North stuffing a collective cork into its American wine habit comes at a particularly poor time for the U.S. industry, as even Americans are scaling down their alcohol consumption. According to SipSource, which tracks trends on behalf of the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America, U.S. wine sales were down about 2.4% year over year through the first half of 2024.
It’s not only Canada affecting sales. Many wineries import bottles from China, which will be subject to tariffs potentially as high as 145%. Compound that with possible 10-20% tariffs on French oak barrels and corks from Portugal and Spain, and already struggling local wineries will be squeezed even further. How much of these costs can be offset by increased domestic sales—the tariffs are intended to provide a cost advantage for American wines sold within the U.S.—remains to be seen, especially if they lose that advantage by raising prices to make up for the rising costs of production.
In any event, one thing’s clear. The U.S. purchases a lot more wine from Europe than the Old World buys from us. According to data from Eurostat—as reflected in the accompanying graph from statista.com—U.S. buyers imported more than 5 million hectoliters from Italy and France between 2022 and 2023, equating to about $4.5 billion. That’s compared to Europe’s five biggest wine-producing countries, which imported about 300,000 hectoliters from the U.S.
