John Swinney has said he would like to be involved in trade talks between the UK and US following meetings with President Donald Trump about whisky.<\/p>\n
The First Minister has met Mr Trump numerous times this year, championing tariff relief for the Scotch whisky industry \u2013 the UK\u2019s biggest drinks export.<\/p>\n
Discussions remain ongoing about the imposition of a 10% tariff on exports from the UK to the US, a result of Mr Trump\u2019s desire for the levies.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the US president earlier this year during a visit to Scotland, Mr Swinney put the issue of the Scotch industry on the table, with Mr Trump saying he \u201cdidn\u2019t know whisky was a problem\u201d, but appearing open to moving on the issue.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the PA news agency ahead of the SNP conference in Aberdeen, the First Minister said: \u201cI\u2019ve not been privy to the trade talks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would like to be, because I think I\u2019ve actually been quite helpful in all of this.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s clear to me earlier on this year that whisky was not really featuring in the trade talks at all, it was not there as a principle negotiating priority for the UK Government.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I had to make sure it was, because it really matters to Scotland.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trade remains reserved to the UK Government and the First Minister\u2019s visit to Washington last month was facilitated by former ambassador Lord Peter Mandelson.<\/p>\n
Reports emerged last week that whisky could be exempted from the US tariffs, but the First Minister said he had not heard any updates.<\/p>\n
Donald Trump spoke to John Swinney during a visit to Scotland earlier this year (Leon Neal\/PA) <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve sought engagement with the UK Government on the trade talks and we\u2019ve had a certain amount of information, but nothing of the detail and I have no update on the events since the last time I had interactions with the Prime Minister on the margins of the state banquet at Windsor Castle when I had the opportunity to discuss it once again with President Trump and also a number of senior members of President Trump\u2019s administration,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The First Minister argued there was an incentive for the US to reduce tariffs, given casks used to make bourbon whiskey are sold to distilleries in Scotland to age their product, with a fall in output here meaning a decline in demand for American casks.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a very valuable trade \u2013 it\u2019s worth 300 million dollars a year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was in the United States in early September, I talked to one of the companies producing the whiskey casks and they\u2019re having orders cancelled from Scotland because there isn\u2019t sufficient production in Scotland to merit the casks coming from the United States.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, if we just were to take all of this out of the trade talks to say \u2018let\u2019s have zero for zero\u2019, we would see an improvement in the fortunes for Scotch whisky and we\u2019d see an improvement in the fortunes for, principally, interests in the state of Kentucky and the Kentucky bourbon industry.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Swinney has said he would like to be involved in trade talks between the UK and US…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[32,7852,14015,109266,24533,16,10788,49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-492311","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-john-swinney","10":"tag-mr-trump","11":"tag-scotch-whisky","12":"tag-trade-talks","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-uk-government","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115358419129803179","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}