French exports of wine and spirits fell last year, as the sector grapples with the fallout from a trade dispute with China – and faces the threat of United States tariffs.
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Foreign sales of wine, champagne, cognac and other French alcoholic beverages totalled €15.6 billion in 2024, down 4 percent from the previous year, according to figures released by the French Wine and Spirits Exports Federation (FEVS) on Tuesday.
The organisation attributed the decline to “a context still marked by economic and geopolitical tensions”.
Trump’s tariffs
Sales of French alcohol to the United States, its top foreign market, grew by 5 percent last year. However, French wine and spirits exporters – alongside other businesses in the European Union – are concerned about US President Donald Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on the bloc.
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“If taxes were to come back, it would be very bad,” Albéric Bichot, a Burgundy wine merchant, told RFI at the Wine Paris event, taking place this week.
“What we saw with the taxes during the Airbus-Boeing conflict a few years ago is that they were 25 percent, and French business with the United States dropped by almost 25 percent.”
In 2020, the damage to the French wine sector caused by US tariffs was estimated at €500 million, according to FEVS.
Chinese retaliation
In China, the sector’s third-largest market, sales of French alcohol plummeted 20.2 percent, as a slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy weighed on the industry, FEVS said.
The federation also cited Chinese tariffs on European brandy, which Beijing imposed after the EU placed duties on Chinese electric cars over unfair competition claims.
Cognac exports fell 10.9 percent, while armagnac dropped 15.4 percent in terms of value.
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FEVS president Gabriel Picard said EU and French leaders “must resolve without further delay the dispute affecting cognac and armagnac for over a year, as otherwise it will severely impact all links in the supply chain and beyond”.
He called on French Prime Minister François Bayrou to travel to China to resolve the dispute, saying: “This is an absolute emergency.”
(With newswires)