The USA is the leading destination country for Catalan wine and cava exports, with 12.6% and 78.8 MEUR in turnover in 2024

Pau Cortina/Barcelona - The United States is the leading destination country for Catalan wine and cava exports, with 12.6% of global sales of these two products in the world in 2024, according to data from the Catalan Food Promoter (Prodeca). Specifically, the sector exported 78.8 million euros worth of Catalan exports to the USA last year, which represents nearly 2% of all Catalan exports to Donald Trump's country. The President of the United States threatened this Thursday to impose 200% tariffs on wines from the European Union, an announcement that the Regulatory Council of the DO Cava has welcomed with "concern".

When Trump also threatened with general tariffs of 10% a month ago, the Minister of Agriculture, Òscar Ordeig, assured that the Generalitat has "contingency plans" to deal with it, but he also opted to "seek as many markets as possible". Now, the US president is threatening a new specific tariff on wines from the European Union, which would tax them at 200%.

This agri-food subsector has the United States as its main export market, after the EU as a whole. Of the almost 622 million euros that Catalan wines and cavas invoiced last year in sales abroad, 78.8 million euros were generated in the United States. This represents 12.67% of the total, above that exported to territories such as the United Kingdom (11.46%) and countries such as Belgium (9.82%), Germany (7.74%) or Japan (6.31%).

A Furthermore, last year's sales were 10.4% higher than those of 2023 in terms of turnover, and 7% higher in product volume. In terms of the type of sales, sparkling wines (cava and others) account for 62% of sales, and wine, 36%.