The Lemon Fool

The White House has agreed to drop retaliatory US tariffs on UK exports including scotch whisky, raising hopes of a post-Brexit transatlantic trade deal.

In 2019, the then US president, Donald Trump, imposed a 25% tariff on a range of European Union exports, as part of a 16-year trade dispute over state support for aerospace rivals Boeing and Airbus.

Estimates released last month suggested the duty had led to a £500m dropoff in sales of Scottish single malt alone.

But the Department for International Trade (DIT) said on Thursday the Biden administration had ended the tariff. The move followed the UK scrapping punitive measures against Boeing in January.