US president Donald Trump will host Taoiseach Micheál Martin in the White House on Wednesday, in a highly anticipated meeting which is expected to touch on Ireland’s trading relationship with America.
Mr Martin said that a “two-way street” of investment is something he intends to highlight in his discussions with the US president in a bid to address concerns he may voice around a trade imbalance between the two countries.
Ireland is among countries vulnerable to changes in the global economy proposed by president Trump, with a significant proportion of employment, tax receipts and exports all directly dependent on a cluster of US multinational firms.
Employment
Mostly US-owned foreign multinationals, mainly in the technology and pharmaceutical sectors, employ about 11 per cent of Irish workers after successive governments over decades prioritised their jobs and tax dollars.
That does not include those employed by the large accountancy and legal industries here that support the US 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 in 2024, according to data from the Central Statistics Office, driven by a surge in drug exports to the US. The goods trade surplus for the whole of the EU totalled €156 billion in 2023.
While Ireland had a much larger deficit in services with the US of €134 billion in 2023 – mainly due to US companies importing valuable intellectual property and royalties – the focus of Trump's trade wars has been on closing US goods deficits through the imposition of tariffs.
Corporate tax take
A jump in corporate tax revenue from €4.6 billion in 2014 to €28 billion last year, or 26 per cent of all tax collected – even before an extra €14 billion of back taxes from Apple is included – has transformed the Irish public finances into the healthiest in Europe.
The surge coincided with highly profitable multinationals "onshoring" their valuable intellectual property (IP) assets to Ireland. The State's fiscal watchdog estimates that 75 per cent of all corporate tax is paid by large US multinationals, with three firms responsible for almost 40 per cent alone.
Trump's election pledge to slash the US corporate tax rate to the top Irish rate of 15 per cent could threaten Ireland's highly concentrated corporate tax bounty, particularly if any move to bring production back to the US included incentives for the IP to come with it.
Tech companies
Several of the largest US 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 US 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 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 US 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 per cent tariff on pharmaceutical imports. Ireland's foreign investment agency says just 16 per cent of Irish pharmaceutical exports are finished products and around 75 per cent of Ireland's multinational produced goods are exported to international markets outside North America, potentially limiting the impact of any duties.
