美国国家公共电台 NPR California Winemakers Nervous About U.S.-China Trade Talks

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Negotiators from the United States and China have been trying to avert¹ an all out trade war, And among those closely watching this - winemakers here in California. In the past decade, U.S. wine exports to China rose 450 percent. But last month, China slapped a tariff² on U.S. wine, as well as on other U.S. food and agriculture exports. That was in retaliation³ for the U.S. tariffs⁴ on steel and aluminum⁵. KQED's Shia Levitt reports from Napa Valley.

SHIA LEVITT, BYLINE⁶: More visitors come to Napa Valley from China than any other foreign country. Tasting rooms like this one at Honig Winery feature signs in Chinese including ads for door-to-door international delivery.

MICHAEL HONIG: So basically, this is...

LEVITT: On a balcony overlooking his vineyard, Michael Honig points to row upon row of grapes.

HONIG: So we're looking over here. This is our 70 acres. So we're basically looking west in Rutherford. That's sauvignon blanc, a little past that is cabernet. And both of those are the blocks that we use to make the wines that we send to China.

LEVITT: China is now one of the top export destinations for U.S. wine, most coming from California. But a combination of import taxes, tariffs and shipping⁷ costs already mean a huge markup⁸.

HONIG: Our price points in the U.S., for example, for our Napa cab is roughly $50 on the shelf. In China, it's more than double. It's over a hundred dollars on the shelf in China.

LEVITT: That was before the latest 15 percent tariff increase. Chinese consumers haven't felt the sting yet because most stores there are still stocked with pre-tariff wine. Jeff Zhang runs a company called Napa Go, marketing⁹ U.S. wines to China. Zhang says the big wine-drinking season is around Chinese New Year. The spring is usually a good time to restock. But this year, some importers are delaying their purchases.

JEFF ZHANG: Because of this tariff's increase, there are a good amount of wine being held in the inventory¹⁰ from the U.S. - not shipping to China.

LEVITT: They want to make sure there'll be enough demand at the new prices. Honig Winery had an annual shipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars scheduled for this month. That's now on hold till the fall. Likewise, Wente Vineyards in Livermore has $500,000 in wind shipments on hold. Outside another winery in Calistoga, Chinese foreign student Kai Feng Chen says his friends who have traveled to Napa love the wine and will likely continue to buy it. But if the tariff boosts prices for people back home in China, that would make them less popular.

KAI FENG CHEN: If you have a $500 budget for wine, well, most Chinese, I believe, would choose French wine instead of American wine.

LEVITT: And French wines are not the only competition, says winemaker Honig.

HONIG: If you look at other wines from around the world - New Zealand, Australia, Chile - they either have zero tariffs or going to zero tariffs next year as it relates to China. We're going up, doesn't make any sense. We're not going to go out of business because we don't sell wine in China, but I think the bigger challenge is we're going the wrong direction.

LEVITT: A few wineries have opted¹¹ to temporarily take on the entire hit of the new tariff themselves, fearing a lost market share now might take them years to build back. Other wineries are splitting the cost burden with importers. Later this month, winemakers from around the world will converge¹² in Hong Kong for one of the largest wine shows of the year. Many California winemakers are hoping trade talks will be resolved by then so they can continue to make inroads into this growing market.

For NPR News, I'm Shia Levitt in Napa Valley.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE MATTSON 2'S "LONGING OF THE LEFTIST")