5 Days Late, WSWA's New Notes Reports Scotch Whisky Tariffs Lifted

Timeliness, the old adage goes, is the art and essence of journalism. Someone needs to tell that to the folks who produce the WSWA News Briefs, which awoke from its slumber yesterday morning to report that President Trump had announced he would repeal the 10% tariff on all UK whiskey imports.

We reported that in our Thursday, April 30. edition. Worse – at least from our viewpoint – the WSWA News Briefs linked their readers to a story in The Spirits Business, a UK newsletter produced in London. That may explain why the storied emphasized that the Scotch industry "has long lobbied for zero-tarif trade with the U.S." and quoted Mark Kent, CEO of the Scotch Whisky Association, waxing poetic about the "significant boost" Trump's promise holds for the sector.

And why Martha Dalton of Never Say Die Bourbon "said the tariff removal is 'exactly what our industry needed'." The brand's English Bourbon is distilled in Kentucky, exported to White Peak Distillery in Derbyshire where it is matured, and then exported back to the U.S. for sale. All journalism is local, and if I was editing a UK publication I might have done exactly the same thing. But WSWA News Notes is an American pub for American distributors.

What we found even stranger, however, is that WSWA News Notes contains no comment on the tariff relief from WSWA at all.

Here's an offer for our friends at WSWA: Where their contract with the current producer of WSWA News Notes runs out, come talk to us. We just might be able to tailor a newsletter for American distributors based on American sources – and maybe also a with a bit of original reporting.