ANNE-MARIE TREVELYAN, Britain’s trade minister, will urge U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo today to launch formal talks on cutting U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum before the end of the year, a senior British official said.

The move comes after Trevelyan told chief U.S. trade negotiator Katherine Tai in Washington on Tuesday that pressure was growing in Britain for a hike in its retaliatory tariffs on whiskey and other U.S. products unless there was a swift deal to ease the U.S. measures, the official added.

Trevelyan will repeat that message at a meeting scheduled in the U.S. capital with Raimondo today, the official said.

Britain, which exited the European Union on Jan. 31, 2020, is keen to join a U.S.-EU pact struck in October that allows duty-free entry for “limited volumes” of EU-produced metals into the United States, while retaining U.S. “Section 232” tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum more broadly.

British firms will face increased pressure from Jan. 1, when tariffs on EU goods drop as a result of the U.S.-EU deal. The EU dropped retaliatory tariffs against the United States after the EU deal with Washington. (SD-Agencies)