Donohoe: Pharma Tariffs Could Cost Ireland 75,000 Jobs

Bloomberg

3 hours ago

00:00
The pharma tariffs is one thing that, you know, President Trump has promised that those will come very soon. He said that last week. That's a sector where we know that Ireland has particular exposure as well. How are you quantifying those risks? How serious do you see that as being potential damage to the Irish economy? So it's very difficult to quantify what the risks could be while a decision has yet to be made regarding what America may do. From a general point of view, The macroeconomic modelling that we've done for the Irish economy would indicate that there could be approximately 75,000 jobs that could be affected by it across the medium term, with 20 to 25 of those affected across next year. And it's indicated that from a growth perspective, there could be 1 to 1 and a half points of growth that we could lose across the medium term. But again, to put that in the context of what our strengths are, with 2.7 million people at work, we have a growth outlook for our economy even now of 2 maybe even more than 2% per year. So those risks could materialise. They will become clearer in the time ahead. But the reason why these companies have part of their global supply chains here in Ireland is because we've the skill, the experience and the competitiveness built up to keep them in our country. And we will look down at how we can maintain that, even if the trade environment around it does begin to change. What sort of tools would you be looking at? I mean, if you're talking about there being a potential of 75,000 job losses? Well, in terms of the job losses, it's not really jobs that could be lost. That could happen. It could also be jobs that might otherwise not be created And again, looking at all of that, we still believe if that were to happen, it will happen at a time in which the number of people at work in Ireland would still be, by our standards, at a historic high. In terms of the decisions that are available to us to respond back. It is many of the matters we're working on at the moment how we can increase investment levels within our economy. If you look at Mike's article in the business post yesterday about Ireland, he talked about our strengths, but he also pointed to the need to invest. He also talked about the need to maintain openness within our economy. And Minister Chambers and I, who, as you know, it's the Minister who focuses a lot on our public expenditure. I looking at the investment decisions we can make in energy and infrastructure in the next few years, that could strengthen our economy at a moment of change so they are the big decisions that we're looking at at the moment.