US secretary of state Marco Rubio told Tánaiste Simon Harris it was a priority of the Trump administration to address the “trade imbalance” between Ireland and the US when the two men spoke by phone on Tuesday.
In a readout of the call supplied by the US State Department, officials said that they had “expressed eagerness to work together to address our shared interests. They discussed the US priority to address the US-Ireland trade imbalance and reaffirmed the importance of our partnership in addressing issues like Gaza, the conflict in Ukraine, and space co-operation”.
“They also discussed energy security and co-operation with US companies operating in Ireland, two areas of increasing interconnectedness between our two nations.”
There was no mention of the discussion on the trade imbalance in statements about the call supplied by Mr Harris’s spokespeople yesterday.
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Mr Harris’s statement said only: “We agreed on the mutually beneficial nature of the dynamic US-Ireland relationship today, which we look forward to celebrating across the United States during our St Patrick’s Day programmes. Ireland is the sixth largest investor in the United States, with the top ten Irish companies alone in the US employing 115,000 people.”
Asked about the possibility of tariffs on RTÉ News last night, Mr Harris said: “Secretary Rubio doesn’t have responsibility for tariffs in the way I have responsibility for trade here. But he did have an appreciation of the economic relationship.
“I made the point to him that Ireland is the sixth-largest foreign investor into the United States, that it is now a two-way relationship. I was struck by the fact he was familiar with that,” Mr Harris said.
“I made the point that of course it’s perfectly appropriate for any new government to want to examine its economic policies, but we do need to do that in a way that protects the transatlantic trade relationship which is really important, and I felt the secretary of state had an appreciation of that.”
Irish officials are nervous that Mr Rubio’s comments signal that president Donald Trump will seek to corner Taoiseach Micheál Martin on the Irish trade surplus with the US during his visit to Washington next week for the St Patrick’s Day engagements in the White House and on Capitol Hill.
Ireland exports about €50 billion more goods than it imports from the US every year, a number driven principally by pharmaceutical exports. The US president and many of the senior figures in his administration regard the existence of trade deficits as evidence that the US is being exploited by its partners – and have vowed to end the practice, partly through the imposition of tariffs.
Mr Trump has imposed tariffs on goods from Mexico, Canada and China, and has promised that tariffs on EU imports are also on the way.
A Government source played down the significance of the exchanges on the trade imbalance.
“There was a very positive exchange between the Tánaiste and secretary Rubio on the economic relationship and it was actually the secretary of state who noted that Ireland was one of the largest investors in the US and did so in a positive way,” the source said.
“The trade figures speak for themselves but it was not an area of significant focus during the call, the real focus was on strengthening the relationship.”
Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke said the pharma sector is protected from US tariffs under a long-standing multilateral agreement.
Speaking on RTÉ radio’s Today with Claire Byrne show on Wednesday, Mr Burke was commenting on a “very ambitious strategy” on behalf of the indigenous sector and to increase exports.
When asked if there was a plan in place to deal with any possible US tariff on the pharma sector, Mr Burke replied “absolutely”.
“We know that the new Trump administration has appointed a new ambassador to the World Trade Organisation ... but pharma products are very much contained in a multilateral agreement that was established and dates back a long number of years, and that has always been the case for innovation in that sector. So I think it’s very important that that will be protected,” Mr Burke said.
“And also it’s worth noting that some of the major companies that are involved in pharma in our country are here from 50, 60, 70 years. And when you consider in terms of that portfolio, about 67 per cent of all their exports go to the EU and the rest of the world as opposed to the US. So we are pretty diverse in terms of the portfolio that we have,” he said.
“Notwithstanding that I think we as a country always fight protectionism at every hands turn. And as an open economy, we know the challenge that tariffs do present. And we’ve been here before back in 2018 when 25 per cent was put on steel, 10 per cent on aluminium,” Mr Burke said.
“President Trump may change tack here. He may reduce these tariffs. He wants to negotiate ... we need to work to point out what Ireland is doing and the EU is doing in the American economy,” he said.
“There’s ten top companies in Ireland [that] employ over 100,000 people in every state right across the US, all 50 states, some very regional locations from CRH to Kingspan, you know, huge amounts of investment going into the heartland.
“One thing I want to do is really avoid a trade war, a tit for tat.”
