The famous wine region of southern France in the famous in the south of France are hardly too scarce, but the season has already become angry for many of the best producers in Europe.
“We have one (worker) who went … because we could no longer pay him,” said Nadine Auray, who runs with her husband Pierre Jaufffret and a small personal Château Terre Forte outside of Avignon.
“So that’s a guy from a job and we have to find some other markets.”
According to Jufret, the customs threats of US President Donald Trump are already a disaster for French producers and American wine consumers.
“I think he’ll kill the wine market in the USA,” said Juffret.
Trump threatened the alcohol producers in Europe with a catastrophic tariff of 200 percent as part of an evil trade dispute that Trump initiated. It started with the effect against aluminum and steel, but now includes cars and auto parts and wine.
“We should have an order for the US markets in April, and today they said they won’t order,” Auray told CBC News during a visit to the winery early this week. “It is our main importer in California.”
Topes are paid for by importers when entering the United States. Since the programs are ordered well in advance and take months, it is impossible for US buyers to know what they will pay or whether customers are willing to cover the additional surcharge.
Exports decisive
Château Terre Forte produces about 15,000 bottles per year – mostly red – on 25 hectares of vineyards. 70 percent of the couple’s wine are exported, and while Canada is actually her largest foreign market, the 10 percent who go to California and New York is extremely important, says Auray.
She says that the distributor who canceled the sale this week was deeply excused, but said that they couldn’t take the chance to capture the thousands of bottles of French wine that could become more expensive than planned.
“(The importer) said we are sorry for us and I felt sorry for you. You know that your own business could go under and die due to these tariffs,” said Auray.
Europe exports more than 14 billion US dollars from alcohol and wine to the USA every year. The French wine makes up a little more than 2 billion US dollars.
The French industry had already teamed up with the general global turnover of globally decreasing sales, which results from other trade disputes with countries such as China as well as the effects of climate change and a general decline in alcohol consumption.
On Friday, the EU presented a large number of support measures for the industry on which it had been working for months, including additional financial aid to promote tourism, foreign advertising campaigns and the cutting of bureaucracy for breeders.
Retaliation
Exactly what Trump and his officials have in mind for European alcoholic products is uncertain.
The US President has threatened to hit all EU imports with a potential tariff of 25 percent that would theoretically contain wine. Then there could be other tasks that are triggered by European retaliation measures.
After the United States had raised the tasks for European steel and aluminum at the beginning of this month, Trump increased the ghost of the 200 percent penalty for alcohol if the EU struck the American whiskey.
The question of retaliation measures rose again this week after the United States said that all European vehicles will be exposed to a 25 percent tariff from April 2. European trade officers made a meeting with Trump officials in the White House desperately, and it seemed that tariffs of at least 20 percent were inevitable.
Wine producers say, given Trump’s unpredictable decrees and misinformation, it is impossible to know how to react in the coming weeks and months.
“How can you find a strategy for someone who has none – because (Trump) has no strategy,” said Auray and claimed that it feels as if producers were living with all the uncertainty of “quicksand”.
During his first term as President, Trump imposed 25 percent tasks as a punishment for European airlines, including many wines. These punishments were lifted in 2021 after Joe Biden became president.
Later reasons?
The economist Anne-Sophie Alsif, based in Paris, believes that Trump uses tariffs to bring the EU negotiators back to the negotiating table that includes laws that regulate how the US tech giants can operate in Europe.
The EU has vigorously pursued several antitrust cases against large US technology companies such as Google, Microsoft and Apple and argues that these companies misuse their dominant positions, suppressed competition and violated consumers. Two new EU laws, the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, have also tried to enforce standards for misinformation and hate speeches.
“I think that all of these aggressive (US) trade policy may check this technical deal and have more favorable conditions for American companies in terms of digital,” said Alsif.
In the attempt to defend themselves against Trump’s tariff measures, Canadian and European governments are connected in a common cause – but not necessarily to fight together.
“We will combat the US tariffs with our own retaliation measures that have maximum effects in the USA here in Canada,” said Prime Minister Mark Carney on Thursday at a press conference and possibly tried to distance Canada from mutual measures that have taken Europe.
Prime Minister Mark Carney travels to Europe to support the support for Canada in the middle of a trade war with the United States because his cabinet works to diversify the country’s trading partners.
Nevertheless, Trump associated the Canadian and European actions in a social media contribution later on that day.
“When the European Union works with Canada to harm the United States economically, large tariffs that are far larger than are currently planned will be on both,” he wrote.
Look somewhere else
Some French wine producers have already started finding new markets for the long, lengthy process of trying.
Marin Stoffer, the champagne manufacturer Roger-Constant Lemaire, says that his operation, which is not far from the French city of Reims, is one of them.
“We drive to Canada, Calgary and Vancouver in May … We also have to address other markets and search for the possibilities up there,” Stooffer told CBC News.
But he added that the opening of new markets is time -consuming and often does not pay off, especially when the United States are the best international market for French champagne.
Roland Lucure, a MP in the French National Assembly, which represents French citizens in Canada and the USA overseas, said: “French are concerned.”
A double Canadian citizen who held an outstanding role in Quebec’s deposit and investment funds said that the French government’s position was to promote negotiations as immediate retaliation measures. Although he admits, it could be added at some point.
“We have to be firm. We have to be strict. We have to be strong,” said Lecure during a CBC news interview in Paris. “But also be careful that we will all lose if we go into this trade war.”
CBC announced that Trump’s trade war, together with his ban on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, contributed to this in the Oval Office and his hugs about the war in Ukraine
“Only 20 percent of the French really believe that the United States is its ally,” he said. “This is a big change – I mean, that has changed overnight.”
