The 17-year-old dispute over government subsidies to the aircraft manufacturers Boeing and Airbus led in October 2019 to US President Trump introducing 25% penalty taxes on e.g. French wines, duties estimated to have cost 450 million EURO in lost wine revenue for France! (See winesofprovence.org blog 2020-02-23).

Fortunately, the new president Joe Biden has changed direction and already in March this year, a four-month postponement was given regarding the penalty taxes, this with the hope of resolving the subsidy issue in an extremely short time. (See blog post 2021-03-15).

During Joe Biden’s EU summit in Brussels on 15 June, it was agreed that the postponement should be extended by as much as five years! France’s wine producers can breathe a sigh of relief and especially the wine producers in Provence where 30% of the wines are exported of which almost half to the clearly largest market US. The US is the large market in volume but also for more expensive prestige rosé wines.

France and Provence wine growers need this positive news after problems with the pandemic, wine shipments to the UK and most recently the devastating frost in April!

Source: La Revue du Vin de France, The Connexion