Hormone-treated meat from the US is bad... for European motorbikes. Particularly for the Vespa scooter: in the US market, the “Wasp” is in danger of extinction – or almost, in spite of its iconic status on both sides of the pond.

That's because duties on the Italian scooter and all other EU motorcycles between 51 and 500 cubic centimeters might double, as a result of a dispute over customs duties. The dispute, ironically, that was not born yesterday, with the advent of protectionist President Donald Trump, but rather twenty years ago, with the BSE crisis commonly known as mad cow disease, when the European Commission banned hormone-treated American beef.