Irish exporters “have no choice” but to trade through the latest US president Donald Trump-fuelled tariff uncertainty, employers’ group Ibec has said.
Ibec’s head of national policy and chief economist Gerard Brady said the US supreme court ruling “narrows the potential paths the US government can take to achieve their trade aims with across-the-board measures”.
“It also introduces new questions around the ongoing legal framework for tariffs, their structure and potential refund of tariff revenues already paid,” he said.
“There won’t be any relief for business from this news. From an Irish and global economic perspective, companies have no choice but to continue to trade through these questions and await some clarity from the US,” Brady said.
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The US supreme court tore down a significant plank of Trump’s economic agenda last week, ruling he had exceeded his authority by relying on a 1977 emergency law to impose his sweeping “liberation day” tariffs on countries across the world.
In response, Trump said he would invoke a separate law to temporarily introduce a global 15 per cent tariff rate on imports.
[ Trump’s new tariffs: What do we know now?Opens in new window ]
“We have seen since last autumn, particularly after the EU-US tariff framework was agreed, a return of some level of certainty and investment confidence,” Brady said.
“Whilst this latest news doesn’t undo that progress on its own, it will damage confidence if answers on the key questions don’t emerge quickly or if the answers which do emerge look worse than the status quo,” he said.
The chairman of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (Ifac) described the latest US tariff debacle as being almost “beyond rational analysis”.
[ Court ruling leaves Trump heading to China without tariffs leverOpens in new window ]
Seamus Coffey said the supreme court ruling not only called into question the EU-US trade agreement but also the various company-specific deals that have insulated much Ireland’s export trade with the US.
At the end of last year, the White House struck deals with several of the largest US and European-based drugmakers including Pfizer, Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca, which have big Irish operations.
In return for lowering drug prices and promising greater US investment, the companies were given a three-year grace period during which their products would not face planned pharmaceutical-specific tariffs.
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“What we haven’t heard is anything from the companies that have company-specific agreements, where do all those stand?,” Coffey said.
Paul Egan from the Economic and Social Research Institute said it was not clear how the latest developments would impact the EU – US trade agreements reached last year.
“What is clear however is that the last few days represent another shift in trade policy, creating ongoing uncertainty for businesses and governments trying to plan for the future,” he said.
The European Parliament on Monday halted the ratification process of the EU-US trade deal agreed in Scotland last July, claiming the US’s side of the deal is now “so uncertain”.
“Nobody knows what will happen ... and it’s unclear if there will be additional measures or how the US will really guarantee” its end of the agreement, the parliament’s trade committee chief Bernd Lange said.
