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Mainz (dpa / lrs) - The winemakers in Germany are relieved that the US punitive tariffs on wine are suspended after the change of government in Washington.
The Association of German Prädikatsweingüter (VDP) welcomes the decision.
The suspension, limited to July 11, is much too short, says VDP managing director Hilke Nagel.
"We hope that the EU and the US will come to a permanent solution by then."
After the introduction of the sanctions in October 2019, top wines in the USA in particular have become more expensive due to the tariff increase.
"We hope that we can now export profitably to the USA again," says the vintner Florian Lauer in Ayl (Trier-Saarburg district), for whom deliveries to the USA make up around a quarter of his business.
In order to maintain trade relations, he took over most of the 25 percent tariff increase himself, depending on the product, around 20 percent.
The rest was then borne by the importer and the end users.
"We exported in part at cost price."
What the US was unable to accept due to the corona-related closings of restaurants has been absorbed by the Chinese market.
"The day Joe Biden won, we opened a bottle of champagne," says Lauer, "both on this side of the Atlantic and on the other."
He never thought that a small family business could come under the influence of US politics so much.
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The background to the US sanction introduced in October 2019 was the decision of the World Trade Organization according to which the USA may impose punitive tariffs on imports amounting to 7.5 billion dollars for the aircraft manufacturer Airbus due to inadmissible subsidies from the EU.
The USA is Germany's number one wine exporting country, and Riesling wines are particularly in demand.
The German Wine Institute (DWI) in Bodenheim near Mainz put the losses by German wine producers due to the punitive tariffs at twelve million euros.
The US measures were thus responsible for 42 percent of the worldwide decline in sales of wine exports from Germany last year.
A total of 953,000 hectoliters of wine were exported for 277 million euros, nine percent less than in 2019.
"The world market, especially the US market, is highly competitive," says DWI spokesman Ernst Büscher.
Now there is the challenge of regaining lost shelf space in US retail: "It is to be hoped that all those involved use the opportunity this time window gives them to return to normal long-term retail."
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210322-99-917225 / 2