The outgoing US administration is in talks with the UK to try to seal a mini-deal to reduce trade tariffs, Donald Trump's trade chief has said, reports BBC.
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told the BBC he was hopeful for a deal that could see punitive tariffs on Scottish whisky lowered.
The UK recently said it would drop tariffs against the US over subsidies for aerospace firms.
This was in a bid to reach a post-Brexit trade deal with Washington.
In his first international interview, MrLighthizer suggested the UK would need to go further than last week's announcement breaking with the EU's support of European plane maker Airbus.
"I'm talking to [International Trade Secretary] Liz Truss, about trying to work out some kind of a deal... I'm hopeful we can get some kind of an agreement out you know, we don't have a lot of time left," he said. "We have the advantage in that both the US and the UK - particularly the current government of the UK - are not big subsidisers, where some other countries are more inclined to subsidise. So it would be helpful if we could come to some kind of agreement," he said when asked about lowering tariffs on whisky and cashmere. "We are in discussions, we'll see how that works out."
Last week, the UK unilaterally broke with European support of Airbus in a long-running transatlantic trade dispute, changing policy expressed only in January this year of ongoing support even after Brexit, by announcing it would no longer apply tariffs to imports of Boeing aircraft.
Liz Truss said that she wanted to "de-escalate" the 16-year-old conflict over subsidies.
However, the BBC understands that in a phone call, the USTR told the trade secretary directly that the US would not treat this as a concession, because, outside of the EU, the UK had "no authority" to continue to apply retaliatory measures on the US.
"We brought an action against the EU, France, Germany and the UK. The EU just brought one against us, the member states did not in all cases. so there's no question that as a legal point, that is correct," he added.
Instead, the US wants the UK to make concessions on the separate EU dispute over steel and aluminium, where US bourbon was among products upon which European tariffs were levied.
Asked about demands to adapt UK food standards on beef and chicken, as well as reforms to the way the NHS pays for US medicines, MrLighthizer said: "These negotiations are ongoing.
"You know, clearly, the US needs to get additional access to the agricultural market in the UK - that's an important part of it, each side has to get something out of it. These are complicated technical issues. And they're the kinds of things that will be worked out, I think, in the in the final stages of negotiation."
He also indicated that the US team were never convinced that the UK was actually going fully to depart from EU trade rules, because of the sheer amount of UK-EU trade, despite that being the stated policy of the current government.
"The Brexit situation was always something that was on our mind, if you think about it," he stressed.
