Shane Lowry holed a 30-foot birdie putt on the 18th at Doonbeg on Sunday and began stretching his arms out before the ball dropped, a fitting end to a week in which he won the Amgen Irish Open by a record 11 shots. Donald Trump, president of the United States, who just so happens to own the golf resort, was watching from a box seat. He came down to present the trophy.
Then, cameras still running, Trump, as easy as swapping clubs, changed the subject from golf to tariffs. People had been asking him about the 10 percent duty on Irish whiskey, Trump explained. The taoiseach, Micheál Martin, in Dublin the day before.
"Everybody’s been bugging me," Trump said, and announced that on behalf of the U.S., he was taking it off. The famous luck of the Irish had paid off, or perhaps it was the charm. Choose your preferred cliché.
The Irish Whiskey Association puts the annual U.S. export value at roughly €450 million ($519 million). Trump gave no implementation date, so the Irish are on a promise. When he made the same about Scotch, it took nearly three months to take effect.
Interestingly, the man making it says he never drinks, citing the warnings of his late older brother, Fred, who died aged 42 of alcoholism. Still, alcohol has been a persistent fixture of this famous teetotaler's trade policy, used as tool to both reward and punish those with whom he is in dispute. On April 30, the final day of King Charles III’s state visit, Trump said he would scrap the tariff on British whisky—“in honor of the King and Queen who just left," he told reporters, adding that they had got him to do something others had failed to.
The pledge took effect July 24, and Scotch, whose American market was worth £933 million ($1.25 billion) in 2025, now enters at zero. Twice this year, then, Trump has publicly promised a whiskey carve-out after somebody he likes asked for one. The tempting conclusion is that he is a soft touch for whiskey.
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