Why I’m raising a glass to Keir Starmer’s Chinese trade deal - Vladimir McTavish
It’s good to see Keir Starmer’s visit to China wielding some results that could actually benefit Scotland. The Prime Minister and Chinese leader Xi Jinping signed an agreement that will reduce the tariff on Scotch whisky from 10 per cent to 5 per cent.
This will not only provide a much-needed fillip to our nation’s distillers but it also sticks up a welcome two fingers to Donald Trump.
So the US wants to levy a 25 per cent surcharge on our whisky? Who cares? We’ll just sell it to China instead. There’s millions of drinkers there, many of them partial to a dram.
The States isn’t the only market for our hooch. In India they drink it by the boatload; the Germans love the stuff and the French can’t get enough. The entire world loves Scotch whiskies, which are a recognised global leader.
The only real losers in Trump’s tariff war are discerning American drinkers. They are faced with either paying a huge hike to get a decent drop or settling for their own substandard rotgut.
American whiskey is borderline undrinkable. Even when you add a drop of cola to Jack Daniel’s, it still tastes revolting. And the Yanks can’t even spell its name correctly.
So well done, China. Drink all you can to keep Scotland afloat. Of course, if you don’t manage to sink enough of our bevvy, there’s plenty of people in this country willing to take up the slack.
Who knows how the Tartan Army will cope with this price rise in their post-match drams at this year’s World Cup. I suspect every duty-free shop in every airport en route to the US will have sold out by the second week of June. Although there will still be gallons of Jim Beam on the shelves.
Tump’s appalling behaviour at home and abroad has led to calls for a boycott of this summer’s tournament. An English friend asked me what I thought of this moral stance.
Weighing up the odds, my response was “F*** that! Scotland have been boycotting the World Cup for the last 28 years!”
Slainthe!