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Richard and Yalda are joined by one of the world’s most eminent historians and political commentators to discuss culture wars, trade wars, and the possibility of World War Three over Taiwan.

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The impact of Trump’s tariffs is reaching deep into every economy.

We travelled into the French rural heartland, heading for Cognac – the home of French brandy.

It is only half the size of Surrey but its exports to America are worth €1bn a year and that trade is now severely threatened.

The first buds are out on the vines of Amy Pasquet’s vineyard.

An American, she has married into the industry and with her French husband owns JLP Cognac.

She knows more than most the bond brandy has formed between their two countries that goes back to the war.

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Ms Pasquet said: “A lot of the African-American soldiers had really loved their experience here and had brought back the cognac. And I think that stayed because this African-American community truly is a community and they want to drink like their grandfather did.”

The ties remain with rappers like Jay Z’s love for cognac.

However, Ms Pasquet adds: “There’s also this other community of people who have been drinking bourbon for a long time, love bourbon, but find the prices just outrageous today. So they want to try something different.”

JLP’s products were served at New York’s prestigious Met Gala.

They were preparing to launch new product lines in the US. But now that’s in doubt.

It is hard being an American in France now, Ms Pasquet says.

Her French neighbours are appalled by what US President Donald Trump is doing.

She continues: “They’re like, okay, America’s forgotten how close France and America are as far as (their) relationship is concerned. And I think that’s hurtful on both sides. I think it’s important to remember that the US is many things, and not just this one person, and there are millions of inhabitants that didn’t vote for him.”

A fresh challenge for a centuries-old tradition

Making cognac takes years, using techniques that go back centuries. In another vineyard we met Pierre Louis Giboin whose family have been doing it for more than 200 years.

In a cellar dating back to the French Revolution, barrels of oak sit under thick cobwebs, ageing the brandy.

The walls are lined with a unique black mould that thrives off the vapours of cognac.

They have seen threats come and go over those centuries, wars, weather, pestilence. But never from a country they regard as one of their oldest allies and best of customers.

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Mr Trump’s tariffs, says Mr Giboin, now threaten a way of life.

“It’s at the end of like very good times in the Cognac region. It’s been like 10 years when everything’s been perfect, we have good harvest, we sell really easily all the stock, but now I mean it’s the end.”

Ms Pasquet and Mr Giboin are unusual.

Most cognac makers sell their produce through the drink’s four big houses, Hennessy, Remy Martin, Martell and Courvoisier.

Some have been told the amounts they can sell have been drastically reduced.

Independents though like them must find new markets if the tariff threat persists.

Confusion away from the chaos

Outside in the dappled light of a Cognac evening Mr Giboin and I toast glasses of pineau – the diluted form of cognac drunk as an aperitif.

In this idyllic corner of France, a world away from Washington, Mr Trump’s trade war on Europe simply makes no sense.

“He’s like angry against the whole world and the way he talks like that Europe the EU was made against the US to cheat on the US. It’s just crazy to think like this,” Mr Giboin says.

It’s not just what Mr Trump’s done. It’s how Europe now strikes back that concerns the French. And it’s not just in Cognac where they’re concerned

France exports more than €2bn worth of wine to America.

In the heart of the Bordeaux wine region, Sylvie Courselle’s family have been making wine since the 1940s at their Chateau Thieuley vineyard.

It’s bottling season but they can’t prepare the wine headed for America while everything is up in the air.

Showing me the unused reels of US labels for her wine she told me she was losing sleep over the uncertainty.

Later she was meeting with her American distributors.

Gerry Keogh sells Ms Courselle’s wine across the US.

He says the entire industry is reeling

“I think it’s like anything. You don’t really believe it’s happening. And even when you’re in the midst of it, it was kind of like 9/11.

“You’re like… This is actually happening. It’s unbelievable. And when you start seeing the repercussions from the stock market, et cetera, and how it’s impacting every level, it’s quite shocking.”

They know the crisis is far from over and could now escalate.

“We feel stuck in the middle of this commercial war and we don’t have the weapons to fight, I think,” Ms Courselle said.

It is, she says, very stressful.

The histories of America and France have been intertwined for centuries through revolutions against tyranny and two wars fighting for liberty.

America used to call France its oldest ally, but under Donald Trump its now seen here as turning on France and the rest of Europe in a reckless and unjustified trade war.

It is all doing enormous harm to relations between the US and its European allies.

How Europe now decides to retaliate will help determine the extent of that damage.

The severity cannot be overstated, if an additional 50% tariffs are levied on all Chinese goods it will decimate trade between the world’s two biggest economies.

Remember, 50% would sit on top of what is already on the table: 34% announced last week, 20% announced at the start of US President Donald Trump’s term, and some additional tariffs left over from his first term in office.

In total, it means all Chinese goods would face tariffs of over 100%, some as high as 120%.

It’s a price that makes any trade almost impossible.

China is really the only nation in the world at the moment that is choosing to take a stand.

While others are publicly making concessions and sending delegations to negotiate, China has clearly calculated that not being seen to be bullied is worth the cost that retaliation will bring.

The real question, though, is if the US does indeed impose this extra 50% tomorrow, what could or would China do next?

It has said it will “fight to the end”, but what does that mean?

In reality, there are few good options.

There are some obvious measures that China will almost certainly enact.

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Further export controls on rare earth minerals (crucial for the development of high-tech products) are one example. China controls a huge proportion of the world’s supply, but the US would likely find workarounds in time.

Hiking tariffs on high-impact US products such as agricultural goods is another option, but there is only so far this could go.

The potentially more impactful options have significant drawbacks for Beijing.

It could, for instance, target high-profile American companies such as Apple and Tesla, but this isn’t ideal at a time when China is trying to attract more foreign investment, and some devaluation of the currency is possible, but it would also come with adverse effects.

Other options are more political and come with the risk of escalation beyond the economic arena.

In an opinion piece this morning, the editor of Xinhua, China’s state news agency, speculated that China could cease all cooperation with the US on the war against fentanyl.

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This has been a major political issue for Mr Trump, and it’s hard to see it would not constitute some sort of red line for him.

Other options touted include banning the import of American films, or perhaps calling for the Chinese public to boycott all American products.

Anything like this comes with a sense that the world’s two most powerful superpowers might be teetering on the edge of not just a total economic decoupling, but cultural separation too.

There is understandably serious nervousness about how that could spiral and the precedent it sets.