'Please, please, please': How Beshear got the Biden administration to lift bourbon tariffs.
WASHINGTON -- U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo found herself regularly talking on the phone to an old friend as an all-important December deadline approached.
It was Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear.
The governor was imploring the commerce secretary to strike a deal with the European Union on bourbon tariffs, which were set to double on Dec. 1 from 25% to 50%.
“I had a lot of contact with the governor,” Raimondo told the Herald-Leader in an interview. “Mostly him calling me regularly saying, you know, ‘Please please please, you have to resolve these tariffs, because a lot of people are going to lose their jobs.’”
Officials from the United States and EU struck a deal last week, doing away with the tariffs altogether and potentially saving thousands of jobs that would have been lost. The tariffs will be suspended starting on Jan. 1, though the deal does not include the U.K. since it exited the European Union in 2020.
Read more: https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article255555606.html
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