A former senior economic adviser to Donald Trump has said that he admired Ireland’s corporate tax rate and that the US might be wiser in reducing its corporation tax, like Ireland.
Stephen Moore told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland that he would prefer to see the US reduce its corporation tax rather than raise its tariffs.
“Ireland has the lowest corporate tax rate in virtually the world. We’ve always pointed to Ireland as really the model for what the United States should do. Better than raising our tariffs would be for the United States to bring our corporate rate down to 15 per cent, which would get closer to where Ireland is.”
Mr Moore added that he was fearful that Mr Trump’s tariff plan would cost US jobs.
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The US president is due to announce a new raft of tariffs on Wednesday.
“One of the ironies is that we are trying to protect our manufacturing base in the United States and our hard-working Americans who work the blue-collar jobs. But I do worry that the aluminium and steel tariffs and the other tariffs could actually cost US jobs in those industries because they’re going to make these products more expensive. It’s all in a bit of flux, right now.”
Prof John McHale, professor of economics at the University of Galway, told the same programme that “the EU would be wise to take a measured approach to the retaliation”.
“The reason that you would have retaliation is to try to deter the policies of the Trump administration, but I do not think that Trump will be easily deterred and he’ll probably double down if there’s retaliation, so while there’s a lot of political pressure to retaliate, I think a measured approaches is appropriate.”
Prof McHale added that the Irish economy was “definitely going to come under significant stress. The success of the Irish economy has very much been based on integration into the US economy, particularly with the presence of US multinationals here”.
“And the incentive to base here and to route a lot of their revenues and tax payments through the Irish economy, that is definitely going to come under stress”.
Separately, Tánaiste Simon Harris has confirmed threatened tariffs by the US and reciprocal tariffs by the EU could result in a “significant reduction of around half in the amount of pharmaceuticals we are exporting” to the US over a five-year period.
Mr Harris qualified this by saying that “all of this is quite volatile and subject to change”.
Speaking on his way into Cabinet, Mr Harris said Ireland does not want to be “in that space”.
“We don’t want to be in a space where we are seeing 20 per cent tariffs from the EU – we don’t want to be in a space where we see tariffs from the US, we want to be in a space where as a European Union ... we can sit down with the United States of America,” Mr Harris said.
“Our economies are interdependent, it’s a trade relationship worth €1.6 trillion between the EU and the US every year. No president of any political persuasion can ignore that reality,” he said.
Taoiseach Micheal Martin said that Ireland and the EU must try to avoid “worst case scenarios”.
“What is clear is there will be, even after negotiation, there will be some level of tariffs still in place. The issue now because it’s then – how high?
“Then it’s matter for the Irish economy and the European economy to adapt to that, diversify our markets, look at our competitiveness, both within Ireland and within the European Union, there are a lot of measures we can take, but fundamentally, the old order is changing in terms of the economic model.”
Separately, Fianna Fáil MEP Billy Kelleher has said any response to tariffs must be strategic and measured.
A strong response must not be one that harms Europe, he told RTÉ radio’s Today with Claire Byrne show.
Mr Kelleher said Europe was the largest consumer market in the world and it could negotiate from a position of strength.
“You can take time. You can assess and then you can bring forward retaliatory measures that will have an impact on the United States and on President Trump’s position rather than damaging ourselves.” - additional reporting PA
