Who Pays for Tariffs Along the Supply Chain? Evidence from European Wine Tariffs

We study how tariffs affect prices along the supply chain using product-level data from a large U.S. wine importer during the 2019-2021 U.S. tariffs on European wines. Combining confidential transaction prices with foreign suppliers, U.S. distributors, and retail prices, we trace tariff passthrough from producers to consumers. Pass-through at the border is incomplete, yet consumers paid more than the tariff revenue collected. The dollar markups per bottle for the importer contracted, but expanded for the combined distributor-retailer segment. Price changes along the chain reached consumers after one year. We also document tariff engineering that biases unit values in trade statistics.