DUBLIN (Reuters) – Ireland is among countries vulnerable to changes in the global economy proposed by U.S. President Donald Trump, with a significant proportion of employment, tax receipts and exports all directly dependent on a cluster of U.S. multinational firms.
EMPLOYMENT
Mostly U.S.-owned foreign multinationals, mainly in the technology and pharmaceutical sectors, employ about 11% of Irish workers after successive Irish governments over decades prioritised their jobs and tax dollars.
That does not include those employed by Ireland’s large accountancy and legal industries that support the U.S. firms and jobs in the wider economy dependent on the multinational firms’ highly paid employee’s spending.
TRADE DEFICIT
Ireland’s goods trade surplus with the United States reached a record 50 billion euros ($52 billion) in 2024, according to Irish data, driven by a surge in drug exports to the U.S. The goods trade surplus for the whole of the EU totalled 156 billion euro in 2023.
While Ireland had a much larger deficit in services with the U.S. of 134 billion euros in 2023 – mainly due to U.S. companies importing valuable intellectual property and royalties – the focus of Trump’s trade wars has been on closing U.S. goods deficits through the imposition of tariffs.
CORPORATE TAX TAKE
A jump in corporate tax revenue from 4.6 billion euros in 2014 to 28 billion euros last year, or 26% of all tax collected – even before an extra 14 billion euros of back taxes from Apple is included – has transformed Ireland’s public finances into the healthiest in Europe.
The surge coincided with highly profitable multinationals “onshoring” their valuable intellectual property (IP) assets to Ireland. Ireland’s fiscal watchdog estimates that 75% of all corporate tax is paid by large U.S. multinationals, with three firms responsible for almost 40% alone.
Trump’s election pledge to slash the U.S. corporate tax rate to the top Irish rate of 15% could threaten Ireland’s highly concentrated corporate tax bounty, particularly if any move to bring production back to the U.S. included incentives for the IP to come with it.
TECH COMPANIES
Several of the largest U.S. technology firms have their European headquarters in Ireland, including Google , Facebook owner Meta, Apple and Microsoft, with each employing thousands of staff.
Trump has complained about EU regulation of U.S. companies, which includes the powerful Irish data protection commissioner, which regulates firms with EU headquarters in Ireland. It has so far fined Meta, among others, almost 3 billion euros for breaches under the bloc’s strict data protection laws and has a number of investigations open.
The country’s online safety regulator also has a role in policing illegal content and disinformation on some major internet platforms.
PHARMACEUTICALS
The world’s 10 largest drugmakers, including U.S. companies Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Merck, all have large plants in Ireland, which is also a major exporter of medical devices.
Trump has threatened to impose a 25% tariff on pharmaceutical imports. Ireland’s foreign investment agency says just 16% of Irish pharmaceutical exports are finished products and around 75% of Ireland’s multinational produced goods are exported to international markets outside North America, potentially limiting the impact of any duties.
(Reporting by Conor Humphries and Padraic Halpin, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
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