Hit by 93% Tax, Napa Wine Falls Victim to Trade War in China

Source: Bloomberg | July 23, 2019 | Romy Varghese

Exports are falling, and even NBA star-turned-vintner Yao Ming isn’t immune.

A decade ago, basketball legend Yao Ming was such a celebrity in China that he carried the Olympic torch into Tiananmen Square.

But these days, not even the 7-foot, 6-inch Yao can fight his way through the U.S.-China trade war.

Yao’s trouble involves, of all things, wine, his post-NBA business in Napa Valley. Across California, the state’s signature wine business is getting hit by the tit-for-tat tariffs coming out of Washington and Beijing.

China’s latest round of retaliatory tariffs put the combined tax rate on a bottle of American wine at 93%, pushing prices out of reach for much of the Asian country’s growing middle class. Yao Family Wines, started by the Hall of Famer in 2011, has seen its export business drop by half over the past year, said Tom Hinde, the vineyard’s president and winemaker.

California vintners large and small who have spent years building relationships with China are now seeing their work undone by the tariff dispute. Their travails illustrate the far-reaching effects of President Donald Trump’s trade war, where carefully laid business plans from fishing rod suppliers to soybean farmers can turn on the latest headline, meeting or tweet.

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