The vines through the famous wine region in the south of France have barely started in Bud, but the season has already become sour for many best European producers.
“We have one [worker] This is gone … because we could no longer pay it, “said Nadine Auray, who with her husband, Pierre Jauffret, and a small staff run Château Terre Forte, outside Avignon.
“He is therefore a guy from a job and we have to find other markets.”
Jauffret says that the pricing threats of US President Donald Trump are already a disaster for French producers and American wine consumers.
“I think he will kill the wine market in the United States,” said Jauffret.
Asset threatened European alcohol producers with a catastrophic rate of 200% as part of a villain in the trade in tit-for-tat that Trump himself has initiated. He started with American action against aluminum and steel, but now includes cars and car and wine parts.
“We should have an order in April for the American markets, and today they said they would not order,” Auray to CBC News told a visit to the cellar earlier this week. “This is our main importer in California.”
The prices are paid by importers when they enter the United States, and as shipments are ordered well in advance and take months to arrive, it is impossible for American buyers to know what they will pay or if customers will be ready to cover the additional increase.
Crucial exports
Château Terre Forte produces approximately 15,000 bottles per year – mainly red – on 25 hectares of vineyards. Seventy percent of the couple’s wine is exported, and although Canada is actually their largest foreign market, the 10% that goes to California and New York are extremely important, explains Auray.
She says that the distributor who canceled the sale this week was deeply excused, but said that they could not take the chance to be stuck with thousands of French wine bottles which could end more than they had planned it.
“”[The importer] said he was sorry for us and I was sorry for them. They know that their own business could go down and die because of these prices, “said Auray.
Europe exports More than $ 14 billion in alcohol and wine in the United States each year. French wine represents just over $ 2 billion.
French industry had already been grappling With a global decrease in world sales, resulting from other trade disputes with countries such as China, as well as the impacts of climate change and an overall drop in alcohol consumption worldwide.
Friday, the UE revealed A multitude of support measures for the industry on which he has been working for months, including additional financial assistance to promote tourism, foreign advertising campaigns and the reduction of administrative formalities for producers.
Question of reprisals
Exactly what Trump and his officials have in mind for European alcoholic products is uncertain.
The American president threatened to hit all EU imports with a potential rate of 25%, which in theory would include wine. Then there could be other tasks launched by European reprisals.
After the United States has imposed European steel and aluminum tasks earlier this month, Trump raised the 200% penalty spectrum on alcohol if the EU hit American whiskey.
The question of reprisals criticized this week, after the United States said that all European vehicles are faced at a rate of 25% from April 2.
Wine producers say that the unpredictable edicts and unpredictable disinformation of Trump, it is impossible to know how they should react in the coming weeks and months.
“How can you find a strategy for someone who does not – because [Trump] Has no strategy, “said Auray, saying he has the impression that producers live on” moving sands “with all uncertainty.
During his first mandate as president, Trump imposed 25% of tasks on a smaller selection of goods produced by the EU, including many wines, as punishment for subsidies to European airlines. These penalties were lifted in 2021, after Joe Biden became president.
Ulger motif?
The economist based in Paris, Anne-Sophie Alsif, says that she thinks that Trump uses prices to bring the EU negotiators back to the negotiating table on a separate issue, involving laws that regulate the way in which technology giants based in the United States can operate in Europe.
The EU vigorously continued several antitrust cases against large American technological companies such as Google, Microsoft and Apple, arguing that these companies have abused their dominant positions, muffled competition and injured consumers. Two new EU laws, the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act also tried to enforce standards on disinformation and hate discourse.
“I think all these aggressive [U.S.] Trade policies may be to review this technological agreement and have more favorable conditions for American companies concerning digital technology, “said Alsif.
By trying to retaliate against Trump’s pricing measures, Canadian and European governments find themselves joining a common cause – but not necessarily the one they are inclined to fight together.
“We are going to fight the American prices with commercial actions of reprisals which will have our own maximum impact in the United States and minimum impacts here in Canada,” said Prime Minister Mark Carney at a press conference on Thursday, perhaps trying to distribute Canada with any reciprocal measures that Europe takes.
Prime Minister Mark Carney heads to Europe to consolidate Canada’s support in the midst of a trade war with the United States, while his cabinet strives to diversify the country’s business partners.
However, in an article on social networks later during the day, Trump still linked Canadian and European actions.
“If the European Union works with Canada to make economic damage in the United States, large-scale prices, much larger than currently expected, will be placed on them,” he published.
Look elsewhere
Some French wine producers have already started the long and tedious process of trying to find new markets.
Marin Stofer, with the manufacturer of Champagne Roger-Constant Lemaire, says that his operation, based not far from the French city of Reims, is one of them.
“We are going to Canada in May, Calgary and Vancouver … We must also target other markets and seek opportunities up there,” said Stofer News.
But he added that the opening of new markets takes time and often does not bear fruit, especially when the United States is the best international market in French champagne.
Roland Lescure, assistant of the French National Assembly who represents foreign French citizens in Canada and the United States, said that “the French were worried”.
A double Canadian citizen who occupied leading roles in the Quebec deposit and investment fund said that the post of French government at the moment was to encourage negotiations rather than immediate reprisals. Although he admits that it could ultimately happen to that.
“We must be firm. We must be strict. We must be strong,” said Lecure during an interview with CBC News in Paris. “But also beware that if we are going to this commercial trade war, we will all lose.”
Lescure told CBC that Trump’s trade war, as well as his dressing of the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in the oval office and his embrace of Russian stories during the war in Ukraine, contributed to a steep drop in the way the French perceive the United States
“Only more than 20 percent of French people really believe that the United States is their ally,” he said. “This is a major change – I mean, it changed overnight.”
