(Manfred Klimek / Claude Auguste / Editorial team / Source: CNN / animated pic (©VOS): Runwayml)
When Donald Trump announced last year that he would raise effective US tariff rates to a level not seen since 1930, much of the American economy remained remarkably silent. The risk of openly opposing the president seemed too great. Anyone managing billions in turnover calculates political conflicts differently from moral imperatives.
One person did so anyway. Victor Owen Schwartz, owner of New York wine importer VOS Selections, became – as CNN reports – the face of a lawsuit against Trump's most far-reaching emergency tariffs. And he won.
Schwartz is not a corporate executive, nor a lobbyist with armies of lawyers. He is a wine merchant. A family-business owner who imports wines and spirits from 16 countries, arranges containers, calculates margins, and speaks with restaurants, specialist retailers and sommeliers. Someone from the frontline. That is precisely why tariff policy hit him with full force. At one point, Trump threatened certain European products with tariffs of 50 per cent. Anyone importing wine cannot simply absorb such surcharges.
“We cannot simply raise our prices, and we cannot simply pay it either,” Schwartz was quoted by CNN as saying. Since April, he estimated, he had already had to pay tariffs amounting to six figures. For corporations, that is a balance-sheet item. For a medium-sized importer, it is existential.
At first, he hesitated to take on the role of lead plaintiff. There is a difference between joining a lawsuit and publicly standing at the forefront. Ultimately, the Liberty Justice Center filed the lawsuit VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump in April 2025. In the end, the Supreme Court ruled that the far-reaching emergency tariffs were unlawful.
That is more than a legal victory. It is a lesson in political effectiveness.
Schwartz described himself as the “last line of defence”, while large parts of the corporate world remained on the sidelines. The price was high. He spoke of hostile messages by text and email, and of security measures at the office. Anyone taking on the most powerful office in the world does not do so without consequences.
And yet he stayed the course. The logic was simple, he said: he simply could not afford the levies being demanded. This matter-of-factness is perhaps the strongest line in this story. It was not about ideology. It was about calculation – and defending a business model.
In the end, according to CNN, refunds amounting to hundreds of billions could be at stake. Exactly how they would be distributed was still unclear. What is clear, however, is that without the courage of a small wine importer, this ruling would scarcely have been reached.
For the wine industry, this contains a signal that reaches beyond the United States. In times of sales crises, consumer restraint and political uncertainty, there is a tendency to feel like a pawn of global forces. Like an industry left to bear the consequences of other people's prices and narratives. Yet wine is business. And business is power – if it is prepared to use it.
Twenty years ago, European winegrowers fought against overregulation, later against health campaigns, and now against trade barriers. Often defensively, often quietly in the background. The Schwartz case shows another option: assertive rule of law. Anyone who formulates their arguments clearly and is prepared to bear the risk can stand their ground even against a president.
Interestingly, Schwartz said he would celebrate the victory with an old bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. A detail rich in symbolism: in the end, it is wine once again that brings the story full circle.
The industry does not need to hide. It has networks, jobs, tax revenues – and people who are prepared to take responsibility. Victor Schwartz has shown that political influence is not solely a question of size, but of determination.
That is the real message at a time when many complain about the powerlessness of the wine market: sometimes an importer from Brooklyn is enough to set a global shift in motion.