Outgoing Minister for Finance Jack Chambers mentioned US president-elect Donald Trump just once in a speech at an American Chamber of Commerce Ireland (AmCham) event on Thursday to mark Thanksgiving in the US.
“I know there has already been initial contacts including a valuable call between the Taoiseach and president-elect Trump,” he said.
In the rest of his bright and breezy address to business leaders, including many from the 970 US companies operating here, Chambers referred only to the new US administration.
AmCham’s annual Thanksgiving shindig in the Burlington Hotel in Dublin is usually a mutual backslapping exercise where Irish and US officials endorse each other and their evergreen economic ties.
But with Ireland’s blockbuster tax receipts and the country’s €54 billion of US exports now in the crosshairs of Trump’s economic plans, the cosy relationship between Dublin and Washington could come under strain in the coming months.
Ireland’s open, low-tax, export-led economy has surfed the globalisation wave like few others. Trump’s election victory is perhaps the biggest vote against globalisation and a major threat to this country’s economic model.
A private briefing note – drawn up for Ministers and senior Government officials ahead of the US election – warned that Trump’s promise to reshore profits and jobs poses a particular threat to Ireland given the importance of US companies to the Irish economy.
Chambers’s speech manfully avoided the giant tariff elephant in the room while talking up “the enduring bond” between the two countries. He said Ireland would work “constructively” with the new administration while expressing concern about the less “trade-friendly” global environment.
“Such challenging global conditions present risks to open economies like Ireland that have benefited significantly from closer ties to our trading partners across the globe,” he said.
In the main though, it was an exercise in diplomatic restraint.
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