EU drops plans to hit American bourbon with retaliatory tariffs

Amid the economic maelstrom of Donald Trump's trade war, drink makers might take a small drop of comfort: the EU has dropped plans to hit American bourbon with retaliatory tariffs. Bourbon and other US whiskeys have escaped EU countermeasures after heavy lobbying from the EU's drinks-producing countries - such as whiskey-making Ireland and the wine behemoths Italy and France - who feared their alcohol industries would become casualties of a global trade war. Bourbon and wine have been removed from a draft list of US goods that will be subject to EU retaliatory tariffs in response to Trump's duties on…