The Monarchical Logic of Trump’s Tariffs

By Noah Rothman

Friday, May 01, 2026

 

Americans were summarily informed by the president on Thursday that he would loosen the reins he had imposed on American importers in deference to the king of England:

 

 

Trump’s maneuver is its own sort of kingly dispensation.

 

“The Scotch industry has lobbied the administration to eliminate the 10 percent tariff on its whisky for months, with support from American distillers,” Politico reported. After all, American whisky manufacturing is an industry that can thrive even in the absence of protections against foreign rivals and uncompetitive practices. What’s more, Americans drink more Scotch whisky than the Scots themselves, and U.S. distillers recoup “millions of dollars a year” from the export of oak barrels that would otherwise be destroyed.

 

American interests protested Trump’s efforts to save their industry from threats that only the president could discern within weeks of “liberation day.” In a summer 2025 Associated Press report, American distillers feared that the time and money they’d spent cultivating markets in Europe and Canada for American products would be lost in “escalating tit-for-tat disputes” with foreign whisky-makers. Those fears were well founded.

 

Kentucky’s bourbon industry never recovered after Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on Scotch whisky in 2019 during an unrelated dispute with the WTO, resulting in retaliatory tariffs against American products. “As of 2024, whiskey exports were still only $363 million, a 26 percent decrease since the peak in 2019,” the Kentucky’s distilled spirits industry related earlier this year.

 

That anticipated “tit-for-tat” cycle intensified after April 2025:

 

All 13 Canadian provinces and territories removed American-made alcohol, including U.S. spirits, from store shelves, although two provinces have since re-stocked American alcohol. While some of these tariffs were later paused, Kentucky’s whiskey exports declined at an increasing rate during the first half of 2025, down 28 percent compared to June 2024. Exports improved from July through October after the tariff increases were paused. Kentucky’s whiskey exports for the first 10 months of 2025 were down 12 percent compared to the first 10 months of 2024. Exports to Canada were down 42 percent through October and exports to the E.U were down 13 percent. Exports of Kentucky’s distilled spirits to Japan, France, and Germany have also declined.

 

American industrial representatives, members of Congress, and the voters most adversely affected by Trump’s fixation with trade barriers beseeched the president for relief. He was deaf to their petitions.

 

Administration officials maintain that this initiative is part of an effort to unlock a long-envisioned free trade regime with the U.K., but that’s not what it looks like. Trump’s gesture of beneficence to the British monarch is suggestive of the president’s own inclination toward regal detachment. It’s certainly a departure from conventionally republican forms of governance.

 

According to Politico, the withdrawal of these tariffs was a goodwill gesture at a time when the special relationship between London and Washington has been “strained since the start of the war with Iran.” That’s all well and good, but American industry is not subject to patrimonial bargaining between sovereigns. This is not how a free, self-governing people are meant to manage their own affairs. Indeed, essential commercial liberty is being denied to the voting public. That Congress is derelict in its role as the guarantor of that liberty does not alter the indictment of the president’s conduct.

 

But perhaps American distillers should be grateful. Their cause has now become a chit that passes back and forth across a grand geopolitical negotiating table. Imagine the jealousy of the millions of Americans who have not been so blessed by the great mentioner in the White House. Those poor souls will have to wait their turn and hope that some other foreign potentate will appeal on their behalf to the president’s better nature. In the meantime, they’ll have to wait. Two kings are talking.