Just like the grapes, Lodi wineries are being crushed by several variables, including the current political climate
'[Wineries] are choosing to remove some of their vineyards now, pulling them out and looking at alternative crops to put in, and in some cases, they don't have the resources to do that,' Stuart Spencer, Executive Director of the Lodi Wine Grape Commission, said.
Mohr-Fry Ranches is one of the many grape growers in Lodi that have had to remove some of their vines.
Officials identify fatal Sacramento hit-and-run victim
The family-owned business has grown grapes for over 170 years. Jerry Fry is the President and tells FOX40 they've lost tens of thousands of dollars as a result of these recent challenges.
'The grower, in general, is a price taker and so we're dependent on consumption and everything else,' Fry said.
This is also affecting the greater community.
'When the agricultural economy struggles, the whole economy struggles here– the irrigation companies, the fertilizer companies, the farm workers,' Spencer said.
Unlike champagne, California wineries have also been falling flat due to a common concern at the top of everyone's minds: tariffs and trade wars.
'Wine is often a pawn in these larger trade wars,' Spencer said.
Canada is California's top wine importer, and the devastation from Canada's boycott of American wine and 25% import tax is just the beginning.
New Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has promised never to bow down to Trump, and Stuart says California wineries have now reached another big fork in the road.
'[Lodi wineries] need to make decisions based on what they know right now,' Carney said. 'And you know, there are a number of properties up for sale, and there are people exiting the wine business.'
So will these tariffs protect domestic producers?
Both Spencer and Fry say it's too early to tell.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Atlantic
27 minutes ago
- Atlantic
The Damage to Economic Data May Already Be Done
If you have been closely following the ongoing Bureau of Labor Statistics story—in which Donald Trump fired then-Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after being displeased by the bureau's July jobs report and selected the Heritage Foundation economist E. J. Antoni to succeed her—you will have heard an unusual consensus about the airtight political independence of the agency and the people who work there. Among BLS employees, including former Commissioner William Beach, whom Trump appointed in his first term, a fierce loyalty to the data is bone deep. Antoni does not appear to share that spirit of independence, nor does he seem to have a great deal of talent for economics or statistics, according to economists from across the political spectrum. Even so, his power to avoid future reports that embarrass Trump appears to be limited. In an interview recorded on August 4, before his nomination, Antoni proposed eliminating the monthly release of employment data, but the administration has already insisted that that won't happen. BLS data may not be completely tamper-proof, but they're pretty close. The sharpest economic minds in this country, both inside and outside the bureau, pay meticulous attention to the deepest layers of the data, many strata below the headline-unemployment rate and change-in-payroll employment. Deceiving them all would be very hard to do. Unfortunately, that might not matter. Antoni doesn't have to manipulate any data to undermine the reliability of the government's economic statistics. That damage might already have been done. I was a career press official at the Department of Labor who prepared a series of labor secretaries for their TV appearances early on the first Friday morning of every month. The release of the jobs report—'Jobs Day'—is a marquee event in this little corner of the federal government, when the press and the financial world's attention is fixed on the plaza of the Frances Perkins Building, in Washington. I lasted only one Jobs Day into the tenure of Trump's labor secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, before taking DOGE's buyout deal. I decided to leave the government in large part out of fear of precisely the kind of demands for oaths of political loyalty that were being threatened then and are now being implicitly exacted on every career civil servant at the BLS. Brian Klaas: Will Trump get his Potemkin statistics? Most labor secretaries, understanding the power of jobs data to create or destroy value in the financial markets, have taken a sober and restrained approach to these press appearances. Then there's Chavez-DeRemer. One of her prime talking points has been that 'native-born workers have accounted for all job gains since Inauguration Day.' Every single one. Not a single Russian surgeon or Canadian blackjack dealer got a job after January 20 of this year. In fact, the BLS makes no such assertion. The claim is absurd on its face—the kind of political catnip that a Cabinet secretary in the Trump administration is expected to put forward without shame, as a kind of homage to the boss. The existence of an independent BLS commissioner is predicated on the idea that someone needs to talk about the labor market who is never tempted to say such things. It's a public service, primarily for investors. Might a member of the Cabinet say something iffy as a result of her political loyalties? That's not ideal, but here's someone else you can listen to who doesn't have that problem. Until now, this arrangement allowed the president's representative to attempt to convince the public of the effectiveness of his priorities while reinforcing the objective, nonpartisan genesis of the underlying data. If the BLS commissioner is now every bit the political animal that the labor secretary is, then what is the purpose of the BLS commissioner? I am not a statistician; perhaps Antoni can mandate methodological deviations that bias the numbers in Trump's preferred direction. But I don't think he needs to. Confidence in the bureau is already badly weakened. This is about more than just our trust as consumers of the jobs report, because we are also its producers. To create its reports, the BLS needs businesses and citizens to take the time to respond to surveys about changes to their payroll and about who is going to work or looking for a job in their household. Even before Trump won the election last November, the trend in survey responsiveness was declining, posing an existential threat to the robustness of the data. The appointment of a transparent partisan to the head of the BLS is unlikely to improve matters. Why should we take the time to report our economic circumstances to the government if we believe the government isn't interested in the truth? If fewer Americans think that contributing to the creation of these reports is a valuable use of their time, the civil servants at the BLS will struggle to produce reliable numbers, regardless of what policies Antoni puts into place. The damage to our understanding of the economy would be far more consequential than a month of bad jobs numbers.
Epoch Times
30 minutes ago
- Epoch Times
‘Fighting for Freedom on Raritan Bay': Revisiting Maritime Clashes
Perfectly timed for release ahead of the 250th anniversary celebration of American independence, John R. Schneider's new book explores an aspect of the Revolutionary War that often gets overlooked—the maritime conflicts across the New York and New Jersey region. These battles provided both miraculous triumphs and grim defeats for the colonists seeking a break with Great Britain. The first battles of the Revolutionary War took place in Massachusetts in April 1775, but the war did not reach the New York-New Jersey region until days after independence was declared in July 1776. Schneider observes that control of the regional waterways came to define how the war was fought.
USA Today
an hour ago
- USA Today
Will the 2026 tax season start late? IRS commissioner sparks speculation
Sure, we're in back-to-school season, but tax pros already are speculating about the potential for a delayed start for the 2026 tax season. The buzz began building after Billy Long, the new IRS commissioner, was quoted in a July 29 article in The Tax Adviser, a monthly publication of the American Institute of CPAs, as well as the Journal of Accountancy. Long said that the 2026 filing season should start around Presidents Day, which is on Monday, Feb. 16 next year. Gulp, are we talking about a potential three-week delay here? Which could mean many early filers would have to wait even longer for their tax refunds? Not so fast, says the IRS in a statement issued after Long made his comments during a Q&A session at the 2025 Tax Summit of the National Association of Enrolled Agents in Salt Lake City. We're being told that things might not be that dire after all. This year, Internal Revenue Service began accepting and processing individual federal income tax returns on Jan. 27. Kicking off the tax season on Feb. 16 would mean we're talking about a roughly three-week delay. According to the article in the Tax Adviser, Long said he pushed for an earlier date but said that IRS staff wanted more preparation time. Long claimed that he was told staff would "need every day in there. But they have this thing down." Not surprisingly, the IRS seemed to back off that claim, according to an IRS statement in an article that Politico posted online Aug. 4. Tax Notes, a publication for tax professionals, posted the same IRS statement in its story online Aug. 5 with the headline "IRS walks back commissioner's filing season prediction." What IRS says now about next year's tax season The IRS statement on the tax filing date, which I later received by email as well, didn't deny Long's comments but offered some hope if you read between the lines. 2025 tax rules: Trump's new tax deduction on auto loans has major limitations: What car buyers should know The statement, first issued July 30 according to the IRS, concluded: "The IRS looks forward to another successful tax filing season next year, and we will announce the timing of its opening in the regular course." According to the July 30 statement, "IRS Commissioner Billy Long is in his second week of a 'boots on the ground' tour of IRS facilities with visits last week in Georgia and this week in Utah." The IRS said: "Billy cares about two groups of people: his employee-partners and taxpayers. He is gathering information on what enhancements can be made to provide an exceptional taxpayer experience for the American people." No kickoff date is set in stone yet. Last year, the IRS issued a news release on Jan. 10 to state that the 2025 tax season would start on Monday, Jan. 27, 2025. When will the IRS begin accepting tax returns? It's a popular question that readers search for online as the calendar year comes closer to an end. But remember, we likely have five months to go from now before the IRS announces when the agency will begin accepting and processing more than 140 million individual income returns for the 2025 tax year. My guess? The speculation has only just begun. Fingers crossed, and it will all work out. Don't bet too heavily against the possibility for at least a few glitches along the way. Some tax professionals remain cautiously optimistic Mark Luscombe, principal analyst for Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting in Riverwoods, Illinois, told me that the good news for the IRS is that the "One Big, Beautiful Bill Act" passed in early July instead of the end of December. "This would normally give the IRS time to prepare for the filing season," Luscombe said. Yet, there are potential glitches, he said. First, the IRS is dealing with significant staff reductions. Luscombe said it's hard to know whether staff reductions affected some key positions at the IRS. But he suggested that if IRS staff at one point told the IRS commissioner that the start of the filing season would probably need to be delayed well into February, then "that is an indication that the staff is concerned about being ready in time for the start of the tax season." On top of that, Luscombe said, Congress is talking about the possibility of another tax bill this year, which could potentially hit late in the year and also affect the start of tax filing season. "If the IRS staff says they need until Presidents Day in 2026, I would take them at their word, which would also mean delayed refunds compared to other more recent years," Luscombe said. No doubt, the IRS will do all it can within its power to avoid the uproar that would take place with any Presidents Day launch. "My interpretation of last week's comments is that the IRS is concerned but still trying to avoid a long delay," said Janet Holtzblatt, senior fellow for the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center in Washington, D.C. If the launch of the filing season is delayed, she said, it will more likely be due to the 25% reduction in IRS staff than to the tax law changes and new deductions in the one big bill. "The legislation was signed on July 4, which typically would give the IRS sufficient time to implement the new legislative provisions," she said. Typically, when the IRS has had to delay the kickoff date for the tax season, she said, it has been after Congress enacts tax legislation very late in the year. Often, some delays are limited to very specific complicated provisions associated with the new tax laws. For example, she said, the American Taxpayer Relief Act was enacted on Jan. 2, 2013, and had some retroactive provisions for 2012 returns. In that case, the filing season officially began on Jan. 30, 2013, but the IRS began accepting 2012 returns in various phases as it worked quickly to update forms and instructions to reflect the new law. The tax season essentially was delayed for some filers claiming particular tax breaks on 2012 returns. In 2013, for example, the IRS began accepting tax returns on Feb. 10 from people claiming depreciation deductions. Taxpayers claiming education credits had to wait until Feb. 14. "It wasn't until March 4 that everyone could file," Holtzblatt said. The IRS had to reprogram and test its systems for tax year 2012, including all updates required by the American Taxpayer Relief Act enacted by Congress in January 2013. In recent years, Holtzblatt said, the latest opening day for tax season occurred during the pandemic. The 2021 filing season did not begin until Feb. 12. "If the filing season is delayed, refunds will also be delayed," she said. "Perhaps, the IRS can still manage to avoid long delays, but the task will be challenging with a 25% reduction in staff and a remaining workforce that may well be demoralized." We're talking about more than one big change in tax rules that will impact 2025 tax returns — a new tax deduction of up to $6,000 for those age 65 and older who qualify; a tax deduction on overtime pay; a tax deduction on the interest paid on new car loans, and more. "The fact that there are changes in the law that impact this tax year means the IRS and Treasury must work diligently to both send out appropriate guidance to taxpayers and prepare for changes to filing to accommodate those changes next spring," said Garrett Watson, director of policy analysis at the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. Once again, we don't actually know when the 2026 tax season will start. The IRS typically isn't announcing the start of filing season in the summer just days before school starts. But this summer, we all started talking about one big bill and tax breaks around the Fourth of July. So, I guess it's natural that some soon will be asking once again: When does the IRS begin accepting tax returns? Sort of like seeing artificial Christmas trees sprout up for sale in October. Contact personal finance columnist Susan Tompor: stompor@ Follow her on X @tompor.
