EU & USA: EU's tariffs will be 'devastating' for spirits sector, industry says

Europe's spirits and cosmetics industries hit back at the European Commission's plan to slap tariffs on U.S.-made goods on March 12, saying it put the continent's far larger trade with the United States in those sectors at risk, Reuters reported.

The European Commission said it would impose tariffs on 26 billion euros ($28.31 billion) worth of U.S. goods from next month, ramping up a global trade war in response to U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminium.

The move will include the re-imposition of suspended tariffs on goods like bourbon whiskey, as well as new levies on a host of other products, with other spirits, makeup and essential oils on the list of possible targets.

Industry association spiritsEurope and French cosmetics association FEBEA said Brussels was putting European-produced goods in those sectors, which have large trade surpluses with the United States, in the firing line for retaliatory tariffs.

"There's an enormous risk that we'll find ourselves with retaliatory measures that we didn't ask for," said FEBEA Secretary General Emmanuel Guichard, who added that he has been urging Brussels for weeks to stop the tariffs from going ahead.

FEBEA, members of which include L'Oreal and Estee Lauder, said France imports around 500 million euros a year of American cosmetics, but sends 2.5 billion euros of beauty products in the other direction.

European spirits makers also feared retaliation from the U.S., their largest export destination, said Ulrich Adam, director general of spiritsEurope, which represents top U.S. and European producers like Diageo and Jack Daniel's maker Brown-Forman.

American whiskey exports to Europe stood at $699 million in 2024, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, which added that the previous tariffs on bourbon imposed in 2018 caused a 20% decline.

European spirits exports to the U.S. stood at 2.9 billion euros in 2024, according to spiritsEurope.
"We're being thrown, by our own government, under the bus," said a top executive at a large European spirits producer.

France, Spain and Italy had all asked the European Commission to exclude wine and spirits from the list of targeted products, the person continued, asking not to be named in order to speak freely.

Spain's Economy Ministry said it was responding to the needs of all affected sectors. A French government source said there was talk of removing bourbon from the list of reinstated tariffs, but revisions would have prevented a rapid EU response.

Italy's government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

SpiritsEurope said many European producers also make U.S. spirits and could be directly affected by the levies. U.S. spirits companies are also invested in Europe and throughout the sector's supply chain, so hurting them puts jobs at risk, it continued.

Shares in U.S. beauty firms Estee Lauder and Elf Beauty fell nearly 5%. Spirits stocks were led lower by Brown-Forman, which was down 7%.

"We have done some things to try to get us prepared, but it's a tough spot," Brown-Forman CEO Lawson Whiting told the UBS Consumer and Retail Conference in New York on March 12.

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