This isn’t meant to be a normative statement, but the French government subsidizes wine, cheese and other agricultural export production significantly.
True, but they also pay to destroy it when prices are too low.
Good god, they should just give it away as a marketing cost.
Would this increase prices, decrease prices, or leave prices unaffected?
Depends on how they manage distribution and market expectations to maintain a price floor. OPEC for artisanal delights. I agree care must be taken to not devalue overall product volume.