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The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States urged top US trade envoy Katherine Tai to pursue an immediate suspension of the European tariffs and to secure agreements removing them.
The council emphasized that the swift tariff removal will help support US workers and consumers, with the economy and hospitality industry recovering from the pandemic.
The EU imposed tariffs on American whiskey and other US products in mid-2018 in response to former US President Donald Trump’s decision to slap tariffs on European steel and aluminum.
Since then, US whiskey exports to the UK plunged 53 percent while those to the EU dropped 37 percent, resulting in hundreds of millions of lost revenues for whiskey distillers between 2018 and 2020.
In recent talks to rebuild US trade relations with the EU and the UK, Tennessee whiskey, rye whiskey, and Bourbon were left out.
Tariffs were suspended on some spirits, but the 25 percent tariffs slapped on American whiskey by the EU and UK remain in place.
The suspended tariffs mean some European spirits producers can ship their products into the US duty-free, while American whiskey makers are still subject to tariffs, said Lawson Whiting, president, and CEO of Louisville, Kentucky-based Brown-Forman Corp., distiller of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey.
Whiting estimates that their company has borne roughly 15 percent of the entire tariff bill levied against the US in response to steel and aluminum tariffs.
Worse, the EU's tariff rate is set to double to 50 percent in June in the key export market for US whiskey makers.
According to Amir Peay, the owner of Kentucky-based James E. Pepper Distillery, American whiskey absorbed “collateral damage" in the trade dispute. Consequently, the dispute cost him about three-fourths of his European business. The looming 50 percent EU tariff threatens to wipe out what's left.
The tariffs also forced Kentucky bourbon producers to cut exports by 35 percent in 2020, with shipments bound for the EU plunging by almost 50 percent, the Kentucky Distillers’ Association said.
The EU accounted for 56 percent of Kentucky distilleries exports in 2017, which has dropped to about 40 percent.
