'He was a laughingstock': Tariff-busting wine importer sandblasts Trump

Wine importer Victor O. Schwartz — who would one day initiate the downfall of President Donald Trump’s signature tariff policy — crossed paths with the future commander in chief once back in the 1990s. He was having lunch at a restaurant in Trump International Hotel when he heard a nearby table cracking jokes about the repeat-bankrupt business mogul, whose Atlantic City casinos had just failed.

“A bunch of people were trash-talking him and making fun of his hair,” Schwartz told the New York Intelligencer. “And then he walked by, and, of course, they’re all glad-handing him.” Schwartz was struck by the contradictory behavior, explaining, “He was a laughingstock in New York, he really was,” but the moment Trump entered the room, the guffaws turned to praise. “It’s the hypocrisy of that world.”

Decades passed, and fate brought Schwartz into another brush with Trump, this time only legally speaking, but with much greater consequences. Now, not only was Trump the president, but Schwartz would play a key role in tearing down his tariff program. When Trump began doling out tariffs, winemakers were hit hard as a blanket 20 percent hike on goods from Europe affected not just the wine but the cork and barrels. Sake from Japan and soju from South Korea were hammered with an even higher 24 and 25 percent taxes, and South Africa was nailed by a 30 percent tariff. While Trump declared the announcement of the tariffs “Liberation Day,” Schwartz had his own phrase that many importers will likely appreciate: “strangulation day.”

While many in the country were frustrated by the situation, Schwartz was one of the few people with the opportunity to do something about it. Just after the tariffs were announced, he had what he called a “fortuitous conversation” at a family brunch in which a relative noted that their George Mason University law professor, Ilya Somin, had written a piece for the libertarian magazine Reason calling for plaintiffs in a position to challenge the tariffs.

Somin later admitted that her writings don’t usually have much effect, but this piece struck a chord with small business owners who wanted to fight the administration, from a tackle store on Lake Erie in Pennsylvania, to a pipe manufacturer in Utah, to a women’s cycling brand in Vermont, and the maker of a banana-shaped synth in Virginia. When Schwartz joined the group, he was asked to be the lead plaintiff.

Schwartz emphasizes that his decision to participate wasn’t out of some liberal “vendetta on my part against Trump,” but rather compelled by good business sense. He was disappointed to see so many companies, law offices, and Ivy League schools giving in to the president’s demands. “I certainly thought that the power and money in this country would step up to the insanity from this administration,” he says, but when they didn’t, he stepped up.

“This was a bad business decision,” he says of the tariffs. “This is somebody who’s been bankrupt, what, six times? I do not believe he’s a good business person.”

His case was straightforward: if tariffs are intended to protect domestic producers by raising the cost of foreign products, how could a grower in the U.S. recreate the exact conditions required to bottle a heavy red from Bordeaux? And famously, Champagne can only come from Champagne. Once the case was filed, it made its way through the courts, eventually ending up before the Supreme Court. After three months, a 6-3 decision was handed down declaring that Trump had overstepped his authority. Suddenly, most of the Trump tariffs were deemed invalid.

After spending so much time pondering the matter, Schwartz says he thinks the tariff program was a perfect representation of Trump’s approach to the world. The president, he suggested, has been “hell bent” on this outdated policy for decades, and was only able to attempt their application “because everyone let him do it.”

“It’s very much out of the Roy Cohn playbook,” he said, referring to the Trump mentor and notorious political operative. “We’re just going to do it until we get caught.”

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