Jon Bonné spent nearly a decade as wine editor and chief wine critic of the San Francisco Chronicle and is the author of "The New California Wine" and the forthcoming "The New French Wine." He also covered economics and the airline industry for MSNBC. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

(CNN) In coming weeks, the Trump administration will decide whether to make good on its suggestion to levy tariffs up to 100% on many European goods, including Scotch whisky, French handbags, olive oil, a wide range of cheeses -- and, especially, wine. The move would retaliate for two unrelated trade fights: a World Trade Organization ruling that Airbus got an unfair boost from EU governments providing it excessive subsidies at Boeing's expense, and a French tax on digital services, aimed at making corporations such as Google and Facebook pay their fair share for operating overseas.

If you're asking yourself what Big Tech and big aerospace possibly have to do with Burgundy and provolone, you aren't alone. The choice of products in this tit-for-tat is so nonsensical as to be funny, if only the economic consequences weren't so serious.

Jon Bonné

Why is Trump targeting these goods? No one is sure. These aren't the first penalties; in October, the Office of the US Trade Representative levied a 25% tariff on many European wines for the same reasons -- costs that US businesses have for months been trying to absorb.

Perhaps someone in the administration thought it would boost American equivalents. But if there's one thing I learned during nearly two decades of writing about wine, it's that American wine and European wine aren't interchangeable. Wine's provenance is often protected by law and by trade agreements; Chablis and Champagne, for example, have to come from those eponymous places. But it's not only trade law that dictates there's no equivalency; it's also personal taste. It's widely accepted in the industry that people don't easily switch between one type of wine and another, and experts predict consumers wouldn't even if the tariffs are imposed on French imports.

Moreover, the tariffs on wine, in particular, don't stand to target France effectively. While we are a significant market for the Europeans, we're not as big a deal as we think we are. Take the most relevant example: The French export wine market totaled 9.1 billion euros in 2017, according to the French customs service. The United States bought 1.6 billion euros, while other EU countries bought 3.75 billion euros, and China bought 758 million euros, an increase of nearly two-thirds in just four years.