End of Trump tariffs on whisky sparks row between Scottish parties over claiming credit

Donald Trump’s 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’s sudden announcement on his Truth Social network on Thursday that he would end the tariffs to mark the visit by King Charles and Queen Camilla.

“The King and Queen got me to do something nobody else was able to do, without hardly even asking!” Trump said.

The Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) estimates the 10% tariff, imposed by Trump last year, has cost producers about £150m in lost sales and led to hundreds of job losses. Shares in Diageo, the drinks giant that produces Johnny Walker, rose sharply on the news.

Graeme Littlejohn, the SWA’s director of strategy and communications, told BBC Radio Scotland the breakthrough was a “demonstration of the soft power of the monarch and what he can bring to the United Kingdom”. It had taken “months and months of work” to get negotiations to this point, he said.

The decision sparked a bitter dispute between the Scottish Labour party, UK government ministers and John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, over Swinney’s insistence that his meeting with Trump at the White House last September played a significant part in it.

Labour and the Scottish National party, which Swinney leads, are in the final week of a lacklustre Scottish parliament election campaign in which Labour is fighting to prevent the SNP winning a fifth successive term in office.

Swinney was accused of being “shameless” by Scottish Labour’s deputy leader, Jackie Baillie, after he 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’s Aberdeenshire golf course last summer.

“As first minister, I have made it my mission to do everything possible to lift US tariffs on our whisky,” Swinney said on Thursday night.

“By meeting the president during his visit to Scotland and by going to Washington, to the Oval Office, we made Scotland’s case. And we used every chance to drive our point home, not least the state banquet hosted by His Majesty the King in London last September.”