The Wine Institute—which manages its own international marketing and shipping export program—will provide campaign materials to winemakers, importers, retailers and restaurateurs actively pushing California wine overseas. “The ‘Discover California Wines’ campaign gives our international representatives the tools they need to build California wine sales exponentially around the globe,” said Robert Koch, president and CEO of The Wine Institute. “We’re setting an ambitious goal of more than doubling California/U.S. wine exports to $2 billion by 2022.”

Seeking a listing on a U.S. stock exchange, Yasheng merged in 2004 with Nicholas Investment Co. of Temecula and took over that business’ regulatory reporting.<

As the weak dollar makes the fruits of California farms ever more attractive to overseas buyers, big exporters like Sacramento’s Blue Diamond Growers are finding it tougher to get their products to far-off customers. The high price of oil and shifts in the global balance of trade have made space on container ships hard to come by. Cargo rates are up sharply. Delays of several months have become routine.

“It’s really put a crunch on U.S. ag exporters,” said Tammy Rossi, Blue Diamond’s manager of logistics and operations, as a forklift driver parked the last of 22 tons of almonds in a shipping container at the company’s

If all goes well, the 40-foot-long box will sail from the Port of Oakland through the Golden Gate on Monday and reach Germany 30 days later. A tangle of economic trends, however, has made the journey from Sacramento to Hamburg far less routine than it was just two years ago. From 2001 through 2006, a growing trade imbalance meant more and more containers reached U.S. ports full but left empty. Cargo carriers hungry to fill their ships offered rock-bottom prices and quick service to exporters.

“If the alternative is to send an empty container back, you put your hands on any customer you can,” said Asaf Ashar, co-director of the University of New Orleans’ National Ports and Waterways Institute. But the tide has shifted. The slumping U.S. economy has lowered demand for imports, while booming global demand for food commodities has boosted exports. The weak dollar, which has lost 24 percent of its value against the euro since early 2006, has made imports more expensive for U.S. buyers and exports cheaper for customers abroad.

As a result, fewer empty containers are heading out of U.S. ports. “The market power is changed,” Ashar said. “Shipping lines are putting the squeeze on (exporters) now.” The base cost of shipping a 20-foot-long container – the industry benchmark – from the Port of Oakland to Europe has risen 25 percent in the past year to around $2,500, according to David Enberg, a manager with the freight-forwarding firm EFI Logistics. He expects prices to rise another 20 percent by year end.

With the declining value of the U.S. dollar and increasing wine sales overseas, Charles Shaw wine, an American favorite, may seem in some places more like “One-Buck Chuck.”

That’s because the low value of the dollar is starting to turn California wines into bargains abroad. 2007 was a vintage year for wine exports, which grew by almost 9% to a record $951 million, the Wine Institute, the industry’s main trade group, said Thursday. California wineries make 95% of the U.S. wine sold abroad. Two large Central Valley companies, E. & J. Gallo Winery and Charles Shaw maker Bronco Wine Co., were among the biggest exporters.

Gallo, the nation’s largest wine exporter, has bottles on the shelves of supermarkets in China and 91 other countries, and Bronco is a big supplier of bulk wine that is bottled and sold in England, one of the largest foreign markets for California vintages.

The volume of U.S. wine sold abroad is growing by an even faster, 12% rate. California wine is now sold in 125 countries. On Thursday, the euro rose above $1.52 for the first time in its nine-year history. Further interest-rate cuts in the United States are likely to keep exchange rates favorable for wine exporters. At the same time, the low dollar helps California winemakers fend off foreign competition in the U.S. Jon Fredrikson, a Woodside, Calif., wine industry analyst, believes there are early signs that the low dollar is starting to pay off for California makers of premium wines.

“American wines are a bargain right now, and that’s showing up with what’s being shipped to Canada, where the value of our wine shipments is up nearly 25%,” he said. But exporters and industry analysts said the rosy numbers masked a more negative truth about the global wine market: There’s a huge trade imbalance.

Though the U.S. sold nearly $1 billion of wine abroad last year, it imported $4.7 billion worth, according to Fredrikson. The U.S. is a target for virtually every other wine-producing nation because it is the most lucrative market in the world, he said. Americans drink about $30 billion worth of wine each year.

High-end California vintners are having trouble breaking into many foreign wine markets abroad, where French labels still carry more prestige, he said. Much of the wine moving between the U.S. and Europe is less expensive bulk wine that companies are purchasing to bottle and market under their own labels. Fredrikson said the trade had taken on a certain irony with “these big ships of wine passing each other at night.”

Vintners, though, are bullish about exports. “We can compete very well with anywhere in the world,” said Joseph Gallo, chief executive of Modesto-based Gallo, the largest winery in the U.S. Constellation Brands Inc. of Fairport, N.Y., which owns the Ravenswood and Robert Mondavi brands, among others, said its sales of California wine grew by double digits through November.

“A lot of growth is happening with better wine at higher price points,” said Jose Fernandez, CEO of Constellation Wines North America. “It’s just not people looking for an inexpensive California Chardonnay.” Fernandez believes the low dollar has enticed overseas drinkers to sample California wine, and “once that happens, they discover that they like the quality of the wine.”

Last year the Irvine-based California Avocado Commission unsuccessfully sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture in an effort to keep out Mexican avocados because of concerns about armored scale insects.

Now, Mexican avocado exporters have two active lawsuits against California interests.

Following up on a January lawsuit against the California Department of Food and Agriculture, the Avocado Producer and Exporting Packers Association of Michoacán (APEAM) has filed a lawsuit against the California Avocado Commission, requesting an unspecified amount to compensate for what it called severe damage to the marketing of Mexican avocados in California caused by the commission in 2007. Tom Bellamore, senior vice president and corporate counsel for the California Avocado Commission, said APEAM essentially has refiled the case that was dismissed without prejudice last September. “It is the commission’s position that that those claims then lacked merit and still do today,” he said.

Mexican exporters had hoped to settle the matter out of court, but the avocado commission’s board rejected a settlement proposal, said Emiliano Escobedo, APEAM’s U.S. representative in Los Angeles. “We had definitely hoped that the lawsuits were behind us, but they unfortunately are not,” he said. “What we really want is to sell more avocados and not have to fight anyone in court.”
The lawsuit states that less than two months after Mexico began shipping avocados into California in early 2007 the commission created significant disruption to the market and “severely damaged the ability of Mexican growers and packers to market their fruit,” according to a press release from APEAM.

The lawsuit charges that the California Avocado Commission spread falsehoods and disparaged Mexican avocados in ways that significantly reduced sales. Dale McNiel, Washington, D.C.-based lawyer for APEAM, said the lawsuit alleges trade defamation, interference with contractual relations, interference with prospective economic advantage, negligence and unfair competition. “The gist of the matter is that CAC made numerous public defamatory statements about Mexican avocados which contributed to the severe drop in demand during 2007 and to some extent continuing into the future,” he said.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said Friday the nation’s largest beef recall has set back negotiations to ship U.S. beef to Japan and South Korea. Those markets closed to the U.S. cattle industry in 2003 after a scare over mad cow disease. Schafer said at a convention of meat packers and processors that he is hopeful trade talks will continue, but that the Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. recall has diplomats asking why the U.S. can’t ship safe meat. The USDA recalled 143 million pounds of beef from the Chino-based slaughterhouse after the U.S. Humane Society released undercover video that showed slaughterhouse workers there kicking and shoving sick and crippled cows and forcing them to stand with electric prods, forklifts and water hoses. Downer cows, or those too sickly to stand, are banned from the food supply because they carry a higher risk of mad cow disease and other illnesses.

California, the top U.S. food producing state, has sent its first official agricultural trade mission to communist Cuba, looking to tap a potential $180 million food market. While other U.S. states have pushed ahead in selling Cuba an average $350 million per year in agricultural products, mainly grains, California is a late arrival. Californian companies sold products worth just $735,000 to Cuba in 2006.

“Some of us might be a little late in getting here, but we are here,” California Food and Agriculture Secretary A.G. Kawamura told reporters in Havana. Kawamura is leading a delegation of companies seeking Cuban contracts for dairy products, wine, grapes, figs, nuts and other specialty fruits. So far, Cuba has bought powdered milk and rice from California, and some wine and apples.

U.S. food sales to Cuba were allowed in 2000 under an exception to the trade embargo Washington has maintained since 1962 against Fidel Castro’s government.