January 28, 2021 the Honorable Chuck Schumer Majority Leader
January 28, 2021 The Honorable Chuck Schumer The Honorable Nancy Pelosi Majority Leader Speaker United States Senate United States House of Representatives Washington, DC 20510 Washington, DC 20515 The Honorable Mitch McConnell The Honorable Kevin McCarthy Republican Leader Republican Leader United States Senate United States House of Representatives Washington, DC 20510 Washington, DC 20515 Dear Leader Schumer, Leader McConnell, Speaker Pelosi, and Leader McCarthy: We ask for your help to end the restaurant tariffs. Restaurants, bars, and shops, the social heart of our local communities, cannot afford 25 percent tariffs on European food and drink products and cannot recover with them in place. Our industry needs the tariffs to end immediately. Tariffs hurt many industries, but they hurt the hospitality industry most. As the crisis facing our industry deepens, the urgency of tariff relief grows. Our formula for survival through this economic crisis is simple: for each customer, we need to maximize sales of profit drivers like wine by the glass, and minimize the cost of inputs like cheese, olive oil, meat, and other food. These expensive tariffs make that impossible. We are gravely concerned that existing and proposed support programs do not, or will not, provide relief of the restaurant tariffs. We are also concerned that given the uncertain prospects for bilateral negotiations between the United States and the European Union, tariff relief may not come until well into 2021, or later. In place for over a year, the restaurant tariffs have in no way pressured the European Union to end its aircraft subsidies, yet the United States has kept these tariffs in place through the greatest crisis our industry has ever faced.
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