\n<\/p>\n
Donald Trump\u2019s announcement that he will lift punishing US tariffs on scotch whisky has been overshadowed by a row between rival Scottish party leaders over claiming credit for the decision.<\/p>\n
The whisky industry and business leaders were delighted by the US president\u2019s announcement on his Truth Social network on Thursday that he would end the tariffs to mark the visit by King Charles and Queen Camilla.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe King and Queen got me to do something nobody else was able to do, without hardly even asking!\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
The Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) estimates the 10% tariff imposed by Trump last year has cost producers about \u00a3150m in lost sales and led to hundreds of job losses. Shares in Diageo, the drinks multinational that produces Johnnie Walker, rose sharply on the news.<\/p>\n
Graeme Littlejohn, the SWA\u2019s director of strategy and communications, told BBC Radio Scotland the breakthrough was a \u201cdemonstration of the soft power of the monarch and what he can bring to the United Kingdom\u201d. He said it had taken \u201cmonths and months of work\u201d to get negotiations to this point.<\/p>\n
The decision sparked a bitter dispute between the Scottish Labour party, UK government ministers and John Swinney over the first minister\u2019s insistence that his meeting with Trump at the White House last September had played a significant part in it.<\/p>\n
Labour and Swinney\u2019s Scottish National party are in the final week of a lacklustre Scottish parliament election campaign in which Labour is fighting to prevent the SNP from winning a fifth successive term in office.<\/p>\n
Scottish Labour\u2019s deputy leader, Jackie Baillie, accused Swinney of being \u201cshameless\u201d after Swinney claimed the UK government had done little to raise the tariffs issue with Trump. Swinney said Trump had been unaware of it until they met at the president\u2019s Aberdeenshire golf course last summer.<\/p>\n
Speaking on a distillery visit on Friday morning hastily arranged after Trump\u2019s announcement, Swinney said the president had messaged him directly on Thursday evening to applaud his influential role in the decision.<\/p>\n
He said Trump had thanked him for pointing out last year that the tariffs on Scottish whisky had also hit jobs and profits in Kentucky, because lower whisky sales meant fewer bourbon barrel sales to Scotland.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe president indicates to me in his note the significant influence on his thinking of the Kentucky-Scotland deal, as he puts it, and he references that in his post on social media last night,\u201d Swinney said.<\/p>\n
Swinney said they had briefly discussed international affairs, including the conflict in Iran, during the nine-minute call.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cMy primary duty as first minister is to promote Scotland\u2019s interests and ensure that people\u2019s jobs and livelihoods are protected. I am delighted that the hard work of all involved has now paid off.\u201d<\/p>\n Industry sources said UK officials and ministers had been pressing for whisky tariffs to be lifted since a state banquet for Trump at Windsor last September, to which Swinney was invited by the UK government. At the time, the two administrations were in an uneasy alliance to persuade Trump to act.<\/p>\n Douglas Alexander, the UK Labour government\u2019s cabinet minister for Scotland, said trade agreements were the responsibility of the UK government, not Swinney\u2019s devolved administration, and dismissed Swinney\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first minister can hold as many photoshoots and take as many day trips to Washington as he likes \u2013 this was delivered after relentless engagement and negotiation with our friends, partners and allies in the United States,\u201d Alexander said.<\/p>\n Baillie accused the SNP of hypocrisy. She said Stephen Flynn, the SNP\u2019s Westminster leader, had called for Trump\u2019s state visit last year to be cancelled after the president humiliated the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, while an SNP candidate and former adviser to Swinney had called several days ago for an end to the monarchy.<\/p>\n Jack Middleton, the SNP candidate for Aberdeen Central, told a BBC Debate Night election special: \u201cThe royal family have frankly brought nothing but embarrassment to Scotland and the United Kingdom.\u201d<\/p>\n Baillie said the king\u2019s visit to Washington had clearly been instrumental in Trump\u2019s decision. \u201cJohn Swinney and the SNP\u2019s record is so dismal that they are now trying to claim credit for work they are not responsible for,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The US is the whisky industry\u2019s largest market, worth about \u00a31bn ($1.2bn) a year, and Scotland\u2019s largest export market overall. Scottish whisky producers buy about \u00a3220m worth of bourbon barrels from Kentucky, an essential component in maturing the raw spirit.<\/p>\n Industry sources said it could take months or years to recover the lost business. The tariffs had \u201cled to the gradual erosion of market share versus other whiskies, in a very competitive market\u201d, said one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Donald Trump\u2019s announcement that he will lift punishing US tariffs on scotch whisky has been overshadowed by a row between rival Scottish party leaders over claiming credit for the decision. The whisky industry and business leaders were delighted by the US president\u2019s announcement on his Truth Social network on Thursday that he would end the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[12147,2575,19623,124,1834,5764,2809,72,81,6629],"class_list":{"0":"post-49013","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-claiming","9":"tag-credit","10":"tag-parties","11":"tag-politics","12":"tag-row","13":"tag-scottish","14":"tag-sparks","15":"tag-tariffs","16":"tag-trump","17":"tag-whisky"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/49014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/strong>Swinney later said he was delighted with Trump\u2019s decision and confirmed he had thanked the president personally on Friday afternoon during a telephone call. \u201cThe president was clear that our discussions on the mutual benefit of this deal, and Scotland\u2019s ability to work with the state of Kentucky, formed a very big part of his thinking. He said that he was pleased to be able to do this for Scotland, together with his majesty the king.\u201d<\/p>\n