“I think we’re going to win tomorrow,” Schwartz says. “The fact is, the government changes their defence every time I hear from them. That’s weak, right?”
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Schwartz started his small business in 1987 after a stint in France. He now imports wine from 16 countries – some used to come from Australia and New Zealand, though not currently – and operates on tight margins. His back-of-the-envelope calculations say he would need to find an extra $US500,000 ($775,000) a year.
“We don’t make that,” he says. “Our business, you make 5 to 10 per cent if you’re lucky. Now you’ve got a 15 per cent tax.
“You can raise your prices, certainly. We went through every item and repriced them. Even if we reprice something, I’m not going to see the money from that container for five months. But I have to pay right upfront.”
Schwartz is furious when he hears Trump claim it is the other countries that are forced to pay his tariffs, even though those countries do potentially suffer from their producers selling fewer products. He knows it is the American importers who pay.
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“I feel outraged that a quote-unquote ‘businessman’ doesn’t know the reality of business,” Schwartz says. “The fact is that every single economist looks at this and says: ‘Of course that’s not true’.
“The people who are paying are me and my colleagues. No countries are paying.”
The Trump administration rejects this. Welcoming strong GDP growth figures on Thursday, National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett said the price of imported goods had actually dropped compared to domestic ones, “which is a sign … foreign countries and foreign companies are going to bear a lot of the tariffs”. And real wages grew, which “means people have more money in their pockets than the price increases that they’ve seen”, he said.
When the trade court in Manhattan handed down its verdict in May, Schwartz was cooking dinner at home: pasta alle vongole with a bottle of “beautiful French wine”. The email was full of legal jargon, and he checked with a lawyer friend to make sure he had won. Ten minutes later, ABC News America was on the phone.
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His family were surprised by the attention – “like, ‘who’s this schmuck who got national press?’” he says – but they’ve been highly supportive, as have his friends. “Everybody wants to be your friend when you’re famous.”
Schwartz knows it’s possible, even likely, that the case will end up before the Supreme Court. Alan Wolff, a senior fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics, concurred in a blog post this week, and predicted the nation’s highest court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, would side with Trump.
Wolff says the justices may find the president’s foreign affairs powers come into play, especially since many world leaders have now done deals with Trump on the tariffs, “in effect ratifying his actions”.
But Schwartz remains confident. And he is buoyed by the outpouring of support from across the country and around the world; gifts have included handwritten letters, aprons and a set of 50 monogrammed corkscrews.
“They love me in Italy; they write articles on David versus Goliath,” he says. “This has hit a real, raw nerve.”
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‘I think we’re going to win’: The dad-daughter duo taking on Trump’s tariffs in court
