As of 24 July 2026 Scotch whisky enters the United States tariff-free. The 10% levy that had applied to all British goods since 2 April 2025 was lifted only for whisky: Donald Trump promised it on 30 April 2026, the day after King Charles III’s state visit to Washington, and it came into force twelve weeks later. The US is the largest market for Scotch by value, £933 million in 2025, and over fifteen months under the tariff the industry lost close to £20 million a month.
What changed and what did not
The exemption applies to the customs codes for whisky, so it covers not just Scotch but whisky made in England, Wales and Northern Ireland too. The 10% tariff on British goods stays in place: whisky was carved out as a category, and no other British goods got the same break. In return, bourbon enters the UK on the same terms, an arrangement Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney called “zero for zero“. The link is more significant than it seems: Scottish distilleries buy ex-bourbon casks from Kentucky worth about £200 million a year. Irish whiskey, Cognac and Champagne remain subject to US tariffs, and from 19 August 2026 Canadian whisky pays 50%.
What it cost
It is not the first time whisky has been caught in a trade dispute. In October 2019 single malt Scotch was hit with a 25% tariff over the Airbus-Boeing row, a dispute that had nothing to do with whisky: exports to the US fell by about a third and the industry put its losses at £500 million before the suspension in 2021. Under the 2025 tariff, in force until 24 July 2026, exports to the US dropped 15% by volume and 7% by value between May and December 2025. Across the whole of 2025 the American market lost 4% in value and 9.2% in volume, out of roughly 120 million bottles shipped to the US in total. The Scotch Whisky Association had already counted more than a thousand jobs lost in Scotland by September 2025.
Will prices come down?
In the US, a little and slowly. The reasons matter for readers watching prices from Europe too. The tariff was not charged on the shelf price but on the customs value declared by the importer, before shipping, distribution, state taxes and the retailer’s margin: on a $60 bottle it came to a few dollars, not six. Bottles that already cleared US customs with duty paid will keep selling at the higher prices set under the tariff. Importers and distributors, who absorbed part of the 2025 increase to keep sales steady, have little reason to pass the difference on now. A survey by The Whiskey Wash of 1,025 US readers in May 2026 found that 58.1% expect retailers and importers to keep the savings, and only 26.1% expect to pay less. When the 25% tariff was suspended in 2021, exports recovered quickly and shelf prices barely moved.
For Europe the direct effect is zero: US tariffs do not touch European price lists. The indirect effect matters more: the lowest prices in years that we wrote about in July, with the Ardbeg 10 at €31 and the Lagavulin 16 at €51, depend largely on full warehouses. If the American market starts absorbing bottles again, there will be less stock left to clear in Europe, and if those low prices become rarer in autumn 2026, this will be one of the reasons.
