Donald Trump calls out Ireland for taking US jobs

Countries like Mexico and Ireland are "outsmarting" the US by giving multinationals incentives to move jobs overseas, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said yesterday, highlighting pharma giant Pfizer's imminent relocation to Ireland.

Mr Trump was speaking with the editorial board of the Jeff Bezos owned Washington Post

Referring to pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s recent decision to move its corporate headquarters to Dublin, Mr Trump said that these countries were taking jobs from the US.

"Like Ireland is, you're losing Pfizer to Ireland, a great pharmaceutical company that with many, many jobs and it's going to move to Ireland".

Pfizer is set to relocate to Dublin following its acquisition of Irish headquartered Allergan in a $150 billion deal last year. The deal, a so-called tax inversion, will see Pfizer move its tax base to Ireland where Allergan is based, allowing the company to avoid US tax bills on more than $128 billion of profits earned overseas.

China

But Ireland was not the only country in Mr Trump’s firing line. He again bemoaned the rise of China as an economic power, noting that the US has lost “million and millions” of jobs.

“And you know we have lost million and millions of jobs to China and other countries. And they’ve been taken out of this country, and when I say millions, you know it’s, it’s tremendous. I’ve seen five million jobs, I’ve seen numbers that range from six million to, to smaller numbers. But it’s many millions of jobs, and it’s to countries all over.”

Mr Trump also described Mexico as "the new China", something he has "great issue with", highlighting the decision of companies such as Oreo maker Nabisco (owned by Mondelez International) to move some of its production from the US to Mexico.

“Other countries are outsmarting us by giving them advantages, you know, like in the case of Mexico,” he said, as is the case with Ireland.

Foreign policy

Mr Trump also unveiled a partial list of foreign policy advisors, who are relatively little known, at the briefing, and later suggested that the US should significantly cut spending on the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).