Comment by rickdeckard | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rickdeckard | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

When looking at the actual wine export-volume as factual reasoning [0], it draws a different picture and shows a drop of almost 50% from 2020 to 2025.

Export volume (millions of gallons):

Noted elsewhere, Canada accounts for more than a third of US wine exports [1], so the trade-war with Canada in 2026 surely wasn't helpful either to keep export-volume at 2025-levels...

[0] Association of California wineries: https://wineinstitute.org/our-industry/statistics/us-wine-ex...

[1] https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-08-26/california...

In a story explaining California wine growers pain, be aware that 98% of California wine is consumed in the US. Exports are negligible.

This is like when a story about housing costs was posted and the Canadians chimed in that the US housing woes are due to not having access to Canadian lumber, and the board had to explain to him that that 80% of lumber used in US production is sourced domestically.

The story is way more complicated and hides where the pain points are.

The real average is closer to 25% of lumber coming from Canada but if you look at specific types like SPF which is important for framing, it’s almost evenly split between US domestic and Canada-sourced. Douglas Fir is heavily sourced from Canada. But some lumber like SYP is almost all US domestic.

And in terms of particular states, tariffing Canada sourced lumber has outsized impact because Canadian lumber has a freight advantage so getting US sourced lumber is going to drive up prices even if Canadian is avoided.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the wine story was equally complicated.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com