that productivity in public services is currently below pre-Covid pandemic levels.
Burgundy also produces an increasingly successful sparkling wine, called Crémant de Bourgogne, and a small amount of rosé.All of which is good for Burgundy because while general red wine consumption just keeps going down, white is holding firm, and sparkling is going up.
Also, the reds that come out of Burgundy are, according to Mr Labet, the kind consumers increasingly want, as they are typically lighter than New World reds."What is interesting to see is that there is a strong de-consumption of what we call the big reds, made in the US. Wines with a lot of alcohol, aged in new wood."Less sun and lower temperatures in Burgundy, even with climate change, means less sugar in the grapes and lower alcohol content.
Mr Labet remembers when, for 18 months of his first presidency, Donald Trump hit European wine with a 25% import tariff during a dispute over airlines."We were hostages of that situation, and it really did affect our sales to the US. We had a drop of about 50% of our exports to the US."
Regarding the current 10% Trump tariff, he predicts that French wine producers and US merchants will split the cost of the new import duty between them in order to maintain sales.
But what will be the impact if in July Trump does decide to increase the tariff on all European Union exports to 20%, as he has threatened to do? "We will go back to the 2019 situation where the market was almost stopped," says Mr Labet.For instance, Trump could attempt to re-implement the tariffs under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which empowers the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to address foreign practices that violate trade agreements or are deemed "discriminatory".
And Trump has also threatened other sectoral tariffs, including on pharmaceuticals and semiconductors. Those could still go into effect if they are not justified by IEEPA.Last month the World Trade Organization (WTO) said that the outlook for global trade had "
" due to Trump's tariffs.The WTO said it expected global merchandise trade to decline by 0.2% in 2025 as a result, having previously projected it would grow by 2.7 per cent this year.