California wine grapes rot on the vine
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.8 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 4 December 2025
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
These days, Americans are drinking less alcohol. While that may be a positive from a health perspective, it’s not great news for California grape growers. Industry groups predict that 2025 will be the smallest harvest since the mid-’90s. These changing consumption habits are changing the landscape of California vineyards. Also, the Trump administration is reducing fuel efficiency standards, and layoffs are running high ahead of the next Federal Reserve meeting.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | At a time of kombucha or even cannabis, people are drinking less wine. |
| 0:07.4 | I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. First today, new data showing layoff announcements from companies running at their highest rate of any January to November period since the first COVID year, 2020, 71,000 in November alone. |
| 0:22.1 | Yesterday, it was a payroll company that found 32,000 fewer people getting paychecks last month, |
| 0:27.6 | rather than the normal growth that we see month to month. |
| 0:30.5 | Diane Swank is chief economist of the Audit Tax and Advisory firm, KPMG. |
| 0:34.7 | Morning. |
| 0:35.5 | Good morning. |
| 0:36.8 | So a big interest rate decision next week from our central |
| 0:40.3 | banking friends. You know, all this official government data has been delayed. We did have that |
| 0:45.9 | private sector report yesterday from ADP. That was showing a weak labor market. It is. And that |
| 0:51.2 | certainly just added fuel to the view within the Fed of those of doves that want to cut rates to shore up the labor market. |
| 1:00.0 | There still is inflation also simmering out there, but for the moment, the Fed has decided that the labor market, at least for most of them, is more worrisome than the strength we're seeing in inflation. |
| 1:13.9 | The problem is, of course, we're looking at a lot of old data and we don't have a lot of new data before the Fed actually makes that decision. |
| 1:20.9 | It's not really clear if inflation is the biggest thing we should worry about or the labor market. |
| 1:27.0 | If we could know, it would clear up |
| 1:28.9 | some of that dissent. It really reflects this odd moment we're in where it's very difficult |
| 1:33.8 | to determine which one will dominate because if labor market weaknesses due to things that are |
| 1:39.3 | beyond the sensitivity of interest rates, it will not improve. And inflation could become a more lingering |
| 1:46.4 | problem. On the other hand, if you allow the labor market to continue to deteriorate, what you |
| 1:51.7 | could have is unnecessary pain for an inflation that may indeed resolve itself. But despite this |
| 1:59.4 | anticipated differences of opinion at the Fed, they're going to cut interest |
| 2:02.4 | rates next week, right? Absolutely. They're going to cut either way. And that's coming from the top |
... |
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