--- title: "Straight, no chaser: cognac is collateral damage in Europe’s trade wars" description: "Squeezed by China and America, France’s most exported spirit is learning how little solidarity Brussels offers" author: "Albion Grey" published: 2026-09-26T06:00:04Z modified: 2026-09-27T03:04:49Z url: https://rews.cc/a/straight-no-chaser-cognac-is-collateral-damage-in-europe-s-t-f00ac6 language: en tags: ["trade-war", "cognac", "china", "economy", "europe"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # Straight, no chaser: cognac is collateral damage in Europe’s trade wars *Squeezed by China and America, France’s most exported spirit is learning how little solidarity Brussels offers* By Albion Grey · September 26, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/straight-no-chaser-cognac-is-collateral-damage-in-europe-s-t-f00ac6 ## In brief - Cognac sales have fallen from 230m to 140m bottles since 2023, with 98% of output exported outside the EU - China imposed duties of up to 34.8% on European brandy in 2024 after EU tariffs of up to 35.3% on Chinese EVs - A 15% US tariff agreed at Turnberry still applies to cognac, though British whisky and Irish whiskey won exemptions - Growers are offered two vine-grubbing schemes, but permanent removal covers just 560 of 96,000 hectares so far - The industry supports about 70,000 French jobs and wants an EU solidarity mechanism for sectors hit by retaliation This year’s drought is about the best news cognac has had. As the harvest around the Charente river in south-western France draws to a close, growers reckon they are looking at a reduction of 30 to 40%, in economic terms, on a typical year. “You could say in a way that nature helps regulate our surpluses,” Matthieu Augier, a winegrower in Gondeville, told Euronews. It is a wry sort of comfort, but comfort is scarce: the 300-year-old amber brandy has become the drinks industry’s favourite victim of other people’s trade disputes. Cognac is almost absurdly dependent on foreigners’ thirst. Some 98% of production is exported outside the European Union, with America taking around half and China about a quarter. In 2023 the industry sold 230m bottles; it now sells 140m. The four big houses — Hennessy, Rémy Martin, Martell and Courvoisier — have slashed their orders from growers after clients cancelled contracts. For a business in which wine is laid down for years before it becomes brandy, that is a brutally sudden contraction. The first blow came from Beijing. When Brussels imposed tariffs of up to 35.3% on Chinese electric cars in 2024 — France was among the keenest backers, judging state subsidies to be unfair — China retaliated within days with provisional duties of up to 34.8% on European brandy. “We have been collateral damage in the trade war which started in 2023 between Brussels and Beijing over Chinese electric vehicles, a symbolic product for the EU market,” Raphaël Delpech, director of the National Interprofessional Cognac Bureau, the industry’s trade body, told Euronews. China later confirmed the duties but exempted the big producers that agreed to sell above undisclosed minimum prices. The damage, the industry insists, was already done. “Once the Chinese government singled us out and associated us with an anti-Chinese European and French policy, consumers started to distance themselves,” Mr Delpech said. “The distributors stopped buying our bottles and stopped putting our products on their shelves.” Then came America. Donald Trump’s first administration had already clapped tariffs on cognac as part of the long Boeing-Airbus quarrel; Joe Biden suspended them. In April 2025 Mr Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on America’s trading partners, and in July the EU settled at Turnberry in Scotland for a 15% levy on most European exports, cognac included. The wine and spirits industry has lobbied hard for carve-outs ever since, against a background of American inflation and repeated threats of far higher tariffs on French wines and spirits. The threats alone have cost sales. “It created an extremely anxiety-inducing environment for all our importers in the US, who, just as in China, eventually came to the conclusion that it was better to bet on something safer than cognac,” Mr Delpech said. After EU lawmakers agreed in July this year to scrap the bloc’s remaining tariffs on American goods covered by the Turnberry deal, Washington consented to reopen talks on exemptions. For cognac, little has moved. That rankles all the more because others have managed it. Britain got its whisky exempted in May; Irish whiskey followed in mid-September. “I get the impression that not much is moving forward,” Eric Sargiacomo, a French member of the European Parliament and deputy chair of its intergroup on wines and spirits, told Euronews. “The only ones who have managed to make clear progress on this issue are the British.” The industry knows where its salvation lies. “For us, the recovery will only come through the US market. That’s obvious. China will come eventually, but it will be more complicated,” Mr Delpech said. The sector has written to Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission’s president, and talked to her trade and agriculture departments. “Everybody knows us in Brussels,” Mr Delpech said. Emmanuel Macron has visited the region several times and promised compensation. None has so far arrived. ## An industry with deep roots thinks about pulling some up To shrink supply towards shrunken demand, two vine-grubbing schemes now offer growers money. One pays them to rip out vines for good; applications so far cover just 560 of the appellation’s 96,000 hectares. That is no mystery. “A vineyard is a means of production,” Mr Augier said. “When you plant a vineyard, you’re planting it for at least 40 to 50 years. It’s a form of heritage.” Mr Augier, who is 40, is likelier to take the second scheme: grub up vines temporarily, swear off replanting for five years, keep the vineyard. The stakes reach beyond the still house. Cognac supports some 70,000 direct and indirect jobs in France, from the 260-odd trading houses that age and sell the spirit to coopers, still-makers, hauliers and agricultural contractors. There is a certain irony in all this: Jean Monnet, a founding father of the European project, came from a cognac family and worked in the family firm. The industry his heirs inhabit now wonders what the project is for. Mr Delpech puts the question plainly. “The European policy cannot be strong if it does not protect the industries that bear the brunt of these trade-offs,” he said. If Brussels decides that defending carmakers means cognac loses markets and eats Chinese sanctions, “there needs to be a solidarity mechanism.” Mr Sargiacomo calls cognac “a textbook case for Europe”. Other farm sectors, he notes, are watching to see whether the EU would rescue them too. The answer in their glasses, so far, is half empty.