MICHAEL FRIDJHON: Vote against Trump’s tariffs with your wine choices
It is a good time to express solidarity and buy more Cape wine
The political and economic turmoil of the past week will have repercussions everywhere. It’s easy to assume that Trump’s tariff wars will have little effect on the price of goods in SA or that, if you are not an exporter to the US, it will be life as normal for the foreseeable future.
At the most basic level this may be largely true, though the weakened rand (as much a casualty of the lack of unity of the government of national unity as anything else) will produce knock-on price increases where you might least expect them. The cost of a loaf of bread could go up by more than a bottle of sauvignon blanc: one is subject to the dollar-based price of wheat, the latter is largely inured to import cost inflation. (This would be less true of high-end cabernet, which is aged in French oak barrels — an expense that cannot be deferred and which, together with cork closures, is sometimes greater than the cost of the fruit that goes into the wine.)..
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