Thursday, October 3, 2019

More war

What European goods will be affected by Trump’s new tariffs?

Some of the most beloved — and delicious — European imports are on the list, which reads like the menu for a fancy dinner party. French wine. Olives, virgin olive oil, cherries, oranges and lemons from Spain. Pork sausages and roasted coffee from Germany. Italian cheeses like pecorino, Parmesan and provolone. Stilton cheese, sweet biscuits and Scotch whiskies from Britain.
This means Aldi’s (excellent and inexpensive) German-roasted coffee. This means Glenmorangie (excellent and not at all inexpensive) single malt Scotch. This means all the Parmigiano-Reggiano in the world. This means war.

comments: 6

Chris said...

The proposed tariff list several times uses the word "nesoi," which is new to me but apparently is an initialism for "not elsewhere specified or included." Perhaps soon we'll find "molluscs nesoi, prepared or preserved" on a restaurant menu. (At 25% more, of course.)

Michael Leddy said...

“Nesoi” sounds to me like a dish from a Japanese restaurant. I wonder why they decided to lowercase it.

Charles Céleste Hutchins said...

I feel like the low cost of german-roasted coffee is hiding an extremely high carbon footprint. If you live on the east coast, getting stuff from europe via boat is pretty ok, but most of this stuff is made at roughly equal quality in california, so if you're in the midwest or further, more local is lower carbon.

Don't get me wrong, Trump's trade wars are a nightmare, but I really try not to be long-distance foods.

Michael Leddy said...

You have a point — all our choices are implicated in ever-spiraling problems. I can be happy with domestic coffee, but having only recently re-acquired a taste for it, I’d hate to give up Scotch.

Charles Céleste Hutchins said...

I'm with you on Scotch, as that's something that certainly doesn't have a good local alternative. Irish Whiskey, though, is unaffected by tariffs and is also very nice.

Michael Leddy said...

Yes, it is. I like Jameson’s. And blended Scotch is unaffected. These tariffs seem weirdly, specifically punitive.