Some people, due to their insecurities, think wine lovers are arrogant, evil pricks. Maybe we are. But we are also saving the world. Taking on Donald Trump isn’t safe, due to his way of going after people with both the U.S. government and his followers. If you so much as question Trump, you are not going to get invited to dinner with him unless you buy hundreds of $Trump Memecoins. So what powerful people sued him over his tariffs? Was it Apple? Walmart? Microsoft? Amazon? We Buy Stuff From China Inc? The lead plaintiff in V.O.S. Selections, Inc. v. United States is a wine importer in New York City, run by Victor Owen Schwartz and his daughter, Chloë Syrah Schwartz, whose mother does not care about middle names.
He’s a guy who was able to move to France in 1986 to work in the wine industry by listing the apartment he rented for $350 a month in The Village Voice as an illegal sublet, and then getting $1,500 a month from The Cars so their sound engineer could live there while recording Door to Door. Without Victor we would have neither number 17 Billboard hit “You Are the Girl” nor a functioning economy. Because on May 28, a three-judge panel ruled that Victor was right and that Trump doesn’t have the authority to set tariffs under his made-up national emergency, which was that tariffs were too low. If it survives all the challenges, it’s going to make it very hard for Trump to tariff stuff¹. When Victor’s wife’s cousin told him about a professor who was working with a libertarian law firm called the Liberty Justice Center to take Trump on, he called the guy. Because he was pissed off about the tariffs. Not just because they’d hike up his prices. But because of cash flow. Unlike taxes – which you pay when someone gives your money for your stuff – you pay tariffs when you buy the products, usually many months before you sell them. To put it more simply:  Jeff Bezos was undoubtedly angry about this too. But Bezos was busy taking photos of his fiancee on his $500 million yacht so he could make sure the sculpture of her on the ship’s prow was anatomically accurate.
Like Bezos would have been had he even considered it, Victor was worried about being the lead plaintiff in the case. He’d be endangering his company’s employees and his family, who are sometimes the same people:
Most business owners, in fact, were too scared. Jeffrey Schwab, the lead counsel on the tariff lawsuit, had been turned down by a dozen people. As Victor told The New York Times, he first asked his family how they felt.
He joined up with companies that sell cycling outfits, fishing tackle, and DIY kits that seem to mostly be for making theremins:
I also cycle. I own a theremin. And while I don’t fish, Henry Winkler does, and I know him.
I’m not arguing that people in these industries are better than other people. I’m saying that courts have now proved that. Schwartz celebrated the ruling by drinking a bottle of Petit Salé.
It’s an interesting sounding $22 white wine from Provence that has a mix of grapes including Vermentino, which is called “Rolle” in France. And if you think knowing that makes me evil, then maybe you should stick to drinking wines that can’t be tariffed, like this:
It pairs well with both smash burgers and economic contraction. 1 Though not vehicles, steel or aluminum tariffs, which were enacted under a different law. But that’s a different Substack’s problem. Invite your friends and earn rewardsIf you enjoy The Corrupt Wine Writer, share it with your friends and earn rewards when they subscribe.
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Saturday, May 31, 2025
The Bravery of Wine Lovers
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