France comes to terms with the duties of Trump, which now returns to threaten Champagne

The duties wanted by Trump begin to be felt on the balance of trade with France, which, almost two months after the entry into force of the tax, 25%, on wine imported from the Hexagon, is forced to reckon with the first adversities, which leads to a decline in shipments that is likely to become worrying. There are no official figures so far except for Hillebrand’s, a shipping company that every year ships 60,000 containers of wine (roughly 720 million bottles, ed) from France to the world, of which 14,000 (168 million bottles) in the U.S., which has already recorded a 20% decline in orders, after a long period of growth, at the rate of +6% per year. A drop that results in 130 containers less in a month, almost 1.7 million bottles. And it does not end there, because, on the table of the endless clash between the U.S. and France there is still the French proposal to introduce a tax on the big digital, the so-called “Gafa” (from the anagram of Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple), to which the U.S. authorities respond by raising the threat of new duties, this time 100% on sparkling wines, which represent an important slice, obviously driven by Champagne, of French wine shipments to the U.S. market.