NEWS
MACRON: FRANCE NEW PM BAYROU WILL VISIT CHINA TO NEGOTIATE COGNAC TARIFFS
By Tony Zhu
9-1-2025
Source: Francois Bayrou/ Instagram
French President Emmanuel Macron said new Prime Minister Francois Bayrou will travel to China to try to make progress on the trade dispute that threatens Cognac sales.
Macron, who was speaking at an annual conference to French ambassadors on Monday, did not say when the trip will take place.
Former French Prime Minister Michel Barnier had been expected to travel to China early this year to make progress on the dispute but his government fell in December after it failed to find enough support for a budget aimed at taming a wide deficit.
The European Union and China are caught in a trade dispute surrounding extra tariffs on China-made electric vehicles.
Despite strong objection from member states including Germany and Hungary, the EU voted to impose extra tariffs ranging from 7.8 percent for Tesla to 35.3 percent for SAIC and other Chinese EV producers last October.
In retaliation, China started to levy importers of European brandies security deposits ranging from 30.6 to 39.0 percent of the import value from 11 October.
Companies that had cooperated in China's investigation were hit with relatively lower security deposit rate of 34.8 percent, with the rate imposed on Martell the lowest at 30.6 percent.
France was seen as the target of Beijing's brandy probe due to its support of tariffs on China made EVs. French brandy shipments to China reached USD1.7 billion last year and accounted for 99 percent of China's imports of the spirit.
But there have been signs that the tension is easing as China decided to allow the deposit imposed on Cognac and Armagnac importers to be replaced by a less complex bank guarantee.
Also on 25 December last year, China’s ministry of commerce announced that the anti-dumping probe into EU brandy will be extended due to what the ministry cited as “the complexity of the case”.
The probe, originally scheduled to conclude in January 2025, will now run until 5 April 2025, signalling that Beijing is open for more talks with the French government.
(the writer can be contacted at: info@thewinechronicle.com)
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