We surveyed 1,025 American readers in the weeks before the tariff came off. A majority told us they expect importers and retailers to keep the saving, and most said their buying habits will not change at all.
The 10 percent tariff on Scotch whisky was lifted on 24 July, and the first duty-free shipments left Scotland within 48 hours. Our survey ran before any of that happened, while the levy was still being collected at American ports and nobody could be certain of the date it would end.
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We asked 1,025 American readers of The Whiskey Wash, a site that drew 5.3 million visitors in 2025, what they expected the removal to mean for them. The answer, from a clear majority, was that they expected the saving to stop somewhere between the dock and the shelf.
What Our Readers Noticed While the Tariff Was in Place
Nearly two thirds of respondents, 64.5 percent, told us they had noticed Scotch prices rise since the levy was introduced in 2025. Another 18.7 percent said prices had seemed about the same to them, and 16.8 percent were not sure either way.
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The tariff itself was a smaller thing than the reaction to it suggests. The duty was applied to the importer’s landed customs value rather than to the retail price, which on a 60 dollar bottle amounted to a few dollars at most before any margin was added on top.
Yet a substantial majority of drinkers registered an increase at the shelf. Either the pass-through comfortably exceeded the duty being paid, or the tariff supplied convenient cover for pricing that was already drifting upward for other reasons. Neither reading flatters the distribution chain that handled the increase.
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READ THE STORYWhy Most Expect the Saving to Stop Short of the Consumer
We asked whether readers expected Scotch to become noticeably cheaper once the removal took effect, and 58.1 percent said no, because they believed retailers or importers would keep the saving for themselves.
Only 26.1 percent of respondents expected to pay less at the register, while a further 15.7 percent held no firm view either way. The gap between those first two numbers is better than two to one, aimed at an industry that has spent much of the past year describing the tariff as the central obstacle to its American business.
The historical record supports that doubt more directly than the industry might like. When the 25 percent tariff on single malt was suspended in 2021, exports to the United States recovered quickly while shelf prices barely moved at all.
Our readers are extrapolating from a pattern the trade has already demonstrated once within living memory, and they have arrived at the conclusion that pattern supports.
The Tariff Removal Is Not a Demand Story
We asked whether readers expected to buy more once the tariff was gone, and 53.2 percent said they would buy about the same amount as they do now.
Just under a quarter, 24.8 percent, expected to buy more. Another 9.7 percent expected to buy less, which is a small number but not a negligible one given that the question was framed around a change widely reported as good news.
Removing the tariff restores the trading conditions without manufacturing any new demand to go with them. Roughly half of this market has settled into a buying pattern over the past year and does not intend to move out of it simply because a line item has disappeared from an importer’s costs.
Damage to a category does not work like a switch that can be flipped back to its previous position. Drinkers who moved over to bourbon, to Irish whiskey or to a cheaper Scotch expression during the tariff period have had more than a year to get comfortable with that decision.
One in Eight Had Not Heard About the Tariff Removal
Some 12.4 percent of respondents told us they had not heard the tariff was being removed at all.
These are engaged readers of a specialist whisky publication rather than casual supermarket shoppers, which makes the number more striking rather than less. If one in eight of them had missed the story entirely, the proportion among general spirits buyers is almost certainly higher.
That places a natural ceiling on any immediate consumer response to the change. A price cut nobody knows to look for is unlikely to shift much behavior in the weeks after it arrives.
What We Will Be Watching Next
Our survey measured expectations at a moment when the tariff was still live and its removal was still a promise.
Two measures will answer whether those expectations were correct over the months ahead. The first is whether shelf prices in American retail move at all through the autumn, and by how much relative to the duty that has been removed. The second is whether the quarter of respondents who told us they would buy more actually do so once the bottles in front of them are priced under the new arrangement.
We will run the survey again in the new year, with the same questions put to the same readership, and publish what has changed. If the 58.1 percent turn out to have been right, that will be a more significant finding about the American Scotch market than the tariff removal itself.
Methodology: fielded in May 2026 among 1,025 United States based readers of The Whiskey Wash. All three questions were single response. Percentages are rounded to one decimal place and may not total 100.
