The Chair of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, Seamus Coffey, has said that Ireland is “powerless” over the impacts US tariffs may have on the country.
US President Donald Trump has unnerved Ireland with his direct assault on the country’s successful FDI policy that has, as Donald Trump sees it, shifted “good American industry”, particularly pharma, and with it jobs and profits to this country.
During the Taoiseach’s recent visit to the White House, Mr Trump blamed the stupidity of successive US administrations for allowing this exodus.
The Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe said last night he was extremely concerned about the potential impact of proposed US tariffs on pharmaceutical exports.
He warned they could deliver a major blow to Ireland’s economy.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Prime Time programme, Mr Donohoe said the Government is preparing for ‘real and significant’ difficulties.
Seamus Coffey said today that Ireland was limited by its size.
“We have no control of what the Trump administration we do, we really have no control over the response of the European level leader. We’re obviously too small to have a significant impact, but this is a policy that would be set at European level,” he said.
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“We are very much powerless here. Our size limits what we can do now, our size is an advantage in terms of getting some of this investment here and the flexibility in our nimbleness, to be able to attract that investment, but it does limit our ability to respond in circumstances like these,” he stated.
“These are circumstances we haven’t seen in decades,” he added.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireand, Mr Coffey said that he would be more concerned for the medium-term future rather than the short-term.
“If companies were to adapt and change their tax structures, we could have a significant change in Irish corporation tax receipts. When it comes to employment, output and production, I don’t see a real near-term risk to that,” he said.
“But certainly, over the medium-term, we should be concerned,” he added.
