Free Republic

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Wednesday that an increase in President Donald Trump's new temporary global import tariff to 15% from 10% was likely to be implemented sometime this week. The new tariff rate was announced by Trump in late February after the Supreme Court struck down his previous global tariffs under a national emergencies law. He initially imposed the 150-day tariffs under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 at a lower 10% rate. "That's likely sometime this week," Bessent said on CNBC of the 15% rate order from Trump. During the 150 days, we will see...

Trade Minister Yeo Han-koo on Wednesday asked the National Assembly to pass a special bill on implementing Korea's investment package for the United States by March 9 as planned, calling it key to maintaining stable trade ties with Washington. Yeo made the remarks in a meeting hosted by the Korea-U.S. parliamentary union at the National Assembly, highlighting the importance of parliamentary support. "The National Assembly's timely passage of the bill is extremely important," Yeo said, noting growing uncertainties in the global trade order following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to strike down U.S. President Donald Trump's global "reciprocal" tariffs. The...

A US appeals court on Monday denied the Trump administration’s bid to delay lawsuits seeking tariff refunds — a ruling that could pave the way for companies to get back the cash they previously paid for the levies. The Department of Justice filed a motion Friday requesting to delay cases seeking up to $170 million in refunds by up to four months after the Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s tariffs on Feb. 20. But this week, a US appeals court ordered the case to be heard by the US Court of International Trade, or CIT, where the case was...

Wholesale prices rose at a faster-than-expected pace in January, countering hopes that inflation was easing, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. The Producer Price Index which excludes volatile food and energy prices, increased a seasonally adjusted 0.8%, more than the 0.6% gain in December and well ahead of the Dow Jones consensus estimate for 0.3%. On an all-items basis, the headline PPI rose 0.5%, also above the forecast for 0.3% and 0.1 percentage point more than the prior month.

Winemakers are pulling the cork on California. Another giant in the world-famous wine growing region is shutting down and slashing staff, making it the fourth since the start of 2026. Jackson Family Wines has stopped production at its Carneros Hill facility in Sonoma’s Carneros region, laying off more than a dozen employees, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notice filed with California authorities on Feb. 12. *** Jackson Family Wines is known as one of the top US wine producers, the sixth-largest wine company in the country. *** It owns the Kendall-Jackson label and about 40 other brands, producing...

If asked to picture an award-winning vineyard, your mind may well wander to a traditional wine-growing region such as Rioja in Spain, Napa Valley in California, Tuscany in Italy or Burgundy in France. It seems unlikely that you would begin with the sweeping plains and granite hills of Texas, but that may be about to change. The past few decades have seen an explosion in the Lone Star State’s wine production, with the number of Texan wineries soaring from around 20 in the 1980s to roughly 450 today, according to industry body Texas Wine Growers. This has been coupled with...

Vineyards in Northern California began planting thousands of acres of new vines in 2016, and with more efficient harvesting methods, it has led to more bountiful harvests of grapes. Having more grapes to make wine sounds good, but if there’s not enough demand to support increased production, the surplus grapes go to waste. Jeff Bitter, president of Allied Grape Growers, told CNN that it’s possible for surplus grapes to make it to the secondary market, where they’re used for brandy or as grape concentrate. But that market doesn’t typically provide sustainable returns for growers. “The main cause of oversupply today...

The US has angered vineyard owners across France with a plan to sell some of its wines in the European Union with a "chateau" or "clos" label. "What is at stake is the respect for tradition and quality," Laurent Gapenne of Chateau de Laville and president of the Federation des Grand Vins de Bordeaux told the Associated Press. For American vintners it is a question of selling more wine in their top export market, unshackled by historic language or restrictive terms in the world of 21st century globalization. "People use words in different ways," WineAmerica chief operation officer Cary Greene...

BEAUNE, FRANCE — Is it time for Burgundy lovers to panic? Are the prices of these most exquisite and expressive wines about to spiral into the stratosphere, propelled by a burgeoning generation of Burgundy fans from China? In short, is Burgundy about to go the way of Bordeaux? Those fears were weighing on many people’s minds last weekend — at least, those who spend euros, dollars, pounds or yen, rather than renminbi — at the biggest annual wine party in Burgundy, three days of not-always-fine dining and drinking that surround the Hospices de Beaune charity auction. At the auction, the...

All is not well with France’s famed wine industry. Despite fears of a rise in wine taxes seemingly having been allayed by the country’s agriculture minister this week, industry leaders are still nursing a headache over government plans to reinforce health warnings on wine bottles and packaging. In reaction to the plan, leaders of the wine industry—which represents France’s second-biggest export sector—have mobilized and created a lobby group Vin et Societé (Wine and Society) to take on the government. … According to Sud Ouest newspaper, the French government plans to change the warning from “Alcohol abuse is dangerous for your...

More than even Italy or France, China guzzled almost 2 billion bottles of red wine last year. Red wine consumption has skyrocketed in the country since 2007, partially because the color red signals good fortune, experts say.China has surpassed France and Italy to become the biggest consumer of red wine in the world. According to a joint report out of Vinexpo and The International Wine and Spirits Research (IWSR), Chinese oenophiles tipped back the equivalent of 1.865 billion bottles last year (or 155 million 9-liter cases).

Let’s take a little break from poop swastikas and other campus micro/macro aggressions to examine a real conflict from abroad. France has finally found something in the clash of cultures to take a stand on…wine. Ahead of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s landmark European trip kicking off this weekend, French officials reportedly nixed plans for a formal meal in Paris with President François Hollande following a dispute over the menu. The Iranians, according to France’s RTL Radio, insisted on a wine-free meal with halal meat — a request based on Islamic codes that amounted to culinary sacrilege in France, a nation...

A lunch between the French and Iranian presidents in Paris was scrapped today because France refused to remove wine from the menu. Iran's President Hassan Rouhani has been on a tour of Europe, signing billions of pounds worth of business deals with different nations, after economic sanctions against the country were lifted. He was due to dine with President Francois Hollande at an upmarket restaurant in the French capital.

Bartender Attacked For Serving Alcohol During Ramadan A female Muslim bartender based in Nice, France, has been attacked by two men for serving alcohol during Islam’s holy month of Ramadan. “I was all alone in the bar when two passersby stormed in,” the woman told French newspaper Nouvel Obs, as translated by RT. “They pointed at the alcohol bottles at the counter, and one of them told me in Arabic, ‘You should be ashamed of serving alcohol during Ramadan’.” One then threatened: “If I was God, I would have you hanged.” The men left, but one later returned and hit...

PARIS (Reuters) - Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Saturday that France would proceed with taxing revenues of big technology firms and urged the United States not to bring trade tariffs into the debate on how to fairly raise levies on digital services. Le Maire was responding to U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to tax French wines in retaliation for France’s digital services tax, which he says unjustly targets U.S. companies. “It’s in our interest to have a fair digital tax,” Le Maire told reporters, speaking in English. “Please do not mix the two issues. The key question now...

French Wine Growers Protest Weak Market 1 hour, 56 minutes ago World - AP By WILLIAM J. KOLE, Associated Press Writer PARIS - Wine is less a beverage than an elixir of life in France, but the country's vintners say they're vexed by a problem that threatens their livelihood — too much of a good thing and not enough people drinking it. Pinched by overproduction, shrinking exports, advertising restrictions, an aggressive campaign against alcohol abuse and changing drinking habits, at least 6,000 growers and winemakers staged spirited demonstrations nationwide Wednesday to press the government for help. "We are a sector...

FedEx sued the U.S. government Monday, seeking a full refund of tariffs assessed under President Donald Trump’s order targeting imports. The lawsuit is one of the highest-profile moves by a major American company following the Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling Friday, which determined that the president did not have the authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose such tariffs. The complaint, filed against the government and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in the Court of International Trade, alleges FedEx incurred costs to expedite shipments through customs and is entitled to a refund of duties with interest,...

US stocks retreated on Monday as investors grappled with the fallout from the Supreme Court's rebuff of President Trump's most sweeping tariffs, which has thrown major trade deals into doubt. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) led the way down, losing roughly 1.3%, or over 600 points. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 (^GSPC) and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) both fell roughly 0.6%, coming off a volatile but winning session on Friday. Growing uncertainty about the global trade landscape is unsettling markets amid debate about Trump's next moves and reaction from countries that have signed US trade pacts. The Supreme Court's...

Millions of acres of farmland across the country are privately owned, but a small share of it is foreign-owned land sitting idle in many areas. That’s according to new U.S. Department of Agriculture data which shows just how much of the nation’s agricultural land is owned by other countries. The USDA‘s online portal reveals that more than 45 million acres of land are owned by foreign countries, with an original purchase value of over $38 billion. Our neighbor to the north, Canada, has the most agricultural acreage in the United States, at 15.35 million acres. John Hewlett, a farm and...

A 6-3 Supreme Court majority on Friday struck down President Trump’s sweeping emergency tariffs (Learning Resources v. Trump) in a monumental vindication of the Constitution’s separation of powers. You might call it the real tariff Liberation Day. It’s hard to overstate the importance of the Court’s decision for the law and the economy. Had Mr. Trump prevailed, future Presidents could have used emergency powers to bypass Congress and impose border taxes with little constraint. As Chief Justice John Roberts explains in the majority opinion, “Recognizing the taxing power’s unique importance, and having just fought a revolution motivated in large part...