The United Kingdom will make the case to US President Donald Trump that Scotch whiskey and other products should be exempted from any tariffs by the new US administration, British Finance Minister Rachel Reeves said on Thursday.
During Trump’s first term, his tariffs against the European Union in 2019 — which then included Britain — also targeted Britain’s important whiskey industry.
Rachel Reeves, whose official title is chancellor of the exchequer, said Britain would work to avoid a similar situation.
“I know President Trump is very proud of his Scottish roots and Scotch whiskey is obviously a really important part of the Scottish economy. We will therefore defend this position very firmly,” Ms. Reeves told AFP in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Ulcerated by international trade generally to the disadvantage of the United States, Donald Trump threatened, during his 2024 presidential campaign, to introduce general customs duties, which could include the United Kingdom.
“I recognize President Trump’s concern about countries that have large, persistent surpluses with the United States. But the UK is not one of those countries,” Mr Reeves said in the Swiss resort of Davos.
“We are not part of the problem that President Trump and the new administration are trying to solve, and we are going to make that case,” she said.
-Rachel Reeves hoped that trade relations between London and Washington could be even better than during her first presidential term.
Trade and investment flows between the two countries “have increased. I have no reason to believe that this cannot happen again in a way that works for both of our economies,” the minister said in response to a question about the possibilities of increasing trade again.
The economies of the two countries were “closely linked”, recalled Ms Reeves, stressing that “a million Britons work for American companies” and that “a million Americans work for British companies”.
Ms. Reeves is coming out of a few difficult weeks, where she faced the weakening of the pound sterling in January, with in addition a sequence of global tension in bond rates, particularly those of British debt, the markets reacting in particular to the difficulties of the economy of the country.
The minister acknowledged that Britain was “not immune to these global fluctuations” but promised that “the number one mission of this new Labor government… is to grow the economy.”
“We will do this by removing the barriers that prevent businesses from investing in the UK. And I am here in Davos to encourage investors and businesses around the world to look at Britain in a different way,” she said.
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