Tariff of 15% ‘challenging' but avoids a trade war
He said 'the devil is in the detail' of the trade agreement finalised on Sunday by Donald Trump and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in Scotland.
'We had a lot of modelling carried out on the various different options, and some were very perverse, that would have closed the market if you had over a 30% tariff with a stacking mechanism,' Mr Burke told RTE Radio.
'The key thing is that there will be a number of carve outs. Obviously, aviation has been cited as zero-for-zero, but also in relation to agrifoods and potentially spirits.'
The bloc is set to face 15% tariffs on most of its goods including cars, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals entering the US and 'zero for zero' tariffs on a number of products including aircraft, some agricultural goods and certain chemicals – as well as EU purchases of US energy worth 750 billion dollars over three years.
Mr Burke said it was his understanding that the 15% tariff on the pharmaceutical sector would be a maximum rate.
He added: 'I think the president of the Commission has been very clear that 15% will be a ceiling.'
It is still unclear from the deal, agreed five days before Mr Trump's threat of a 30% tariff would have come into effect, will mean Ireland will need to invest in US energy, he added.
'This all has to be worked out yet, as you can appreciate, I'm only hearing this for the first time last night, and we have nothing on paper.'
Ireland's premier Micheal Martin and deputy premier Simon Harris welcomed the agreement struck on Sunday, saying that while Ireland 'regrets' the baseline tariff of 15%, it welcomed the certainty for businesses.
Mr Harris said further detail was needed around how tariffs would affect sectors including pharmaceuticals.
Ireland remains vulnerable to a slow down in trade with the US economy, due to exports of products such as alcohol, dairy and beef.
The Irish government has also expressed concern at how tariffs could affect pharma multinationals based in Ireland, which employs about 45,000 people in Ireland, as Mr Trump had signalled he intended to target that industry.
In addition, 65% of all aircraft are leased through Ireland globally.
Last week, Finance Minister Paschal Dohonoe said the Irish government would spend 9.4 billion euro on its budget in October, based on a zero-tariff scenario for next year.
He and Public Expenditure Minister Jack Chambers said these estimates would need to be revised if there was a shock to the Irish economy.
Mr Burke said it was not naive to base the government's economic scenario on a zero-for-zero trade agreement with the US.
'No it wasn't because we didn't know what we were to be faced with,' he said on Monday.
'We do need to find out what happens in other areas, because this is very complex.
'It depends what happens with China, that's a very significant market that a deal hasn't happened yet.
'It really impacts what happens with our exporters here in Ireland as well, because so much product is in danger of being redirected into EU market.
'We also don't know what separate carve outs are going to emerge for the different sectors that are so vulnerable from an Irish perspective.
'Until we get flesh on the bones and all those areas over the coming weeks, we'll be in a better position then to really put forward what budgetary parameters (we) will end up with.'
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BBC News
6 minutes ago
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How Europe is vying for rare earth independence from China
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Spectator
17 minutes ago
- Spectator
Deluded Americans are descending on Ireland
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Spectator
18 minutes ago
- Spectator
Haircuts are a human right!
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The umbrella of 'human rights' does nothing but expand and now protects not merely citizens but anyone from anywhere who rocks up on your patch. Imagine, then, that you were born in a rural area of an African country whose political rhetoric isn't so loftily supranational. If you don't scratch a few mouthfuls from your parched smallholding, you don't eat. Your 'accommodation' wouldn't naturally command such a grand label: a grass-roofed hut with a mud floor. Inside you cook on an open fire, the smoke from which is ravaging your lungs. Second-rate healthcare may be available only after a long, expensive journey. Education for your children requires school fees you may not be able to afford. Anyone in such circumstances who hears tell of a place where all these basic needs are 'human rights' even for foreigners and doesn't hightail it to such a Valhalla would have to be stupid, lazy or crazy. Brits shouldn't feel smug about no longer being required to follow the likes of the EU Reception Conditions Directive (yet; give our friend Sir Keir a bit more time), because in the UK asylum seekers are due not just free room and board, but often luxury hotel digs – with four-poster beds, video games and all-you-can-eat buffets – as well as group outings to the circus and safari parks. For British asylum seekers, even Netflix and Disney+ are 'human rights'. Funnily enough, Whitehall doesn't consider such subscriptions human rights for its own citizenry, some of whom, astonishingly, have to pay for them. This human rights business is a bigger issue than its influence on immigration. Is it really the case that the world, or at least your government, owes you a living from the off? At this point, too, maybe we should be asking what's not a human right. In fact, many folks seriously argue that access to the smartphones and the internet is now a human right. Well, we all grow hair. So shouldn't haircuts be a human right? Electricity, clean running water and indoor plumbing? If so, why should anyone pay utility bills? In both British and American cities, the effective decriminalisation of shoplifting – which progressives justify as the poor's response to 'inequality' – means just about any off-the-shelf good is a human right. Razor blades. Turtlenecks. Mayonnaise. A human right is anything you happen to need. Bloated welfare rolls suggest that opting for benefits in Britain has become a lifestyle choice. Taking advantage of a host of programmes, Americans, too, can amass more in state support than the average wage. But isn't that nice? Haven't we created a better world, in which everything is free and work is elective? That way you only take a job if it's fun. Alas, gifting sweeping human rights to some people takes other people's human rights away. Requiring the state to provide all-comers with housing, food, clothing, healthcare and, yeah, maybe even haircuts implicitly demands that the state requisition these resources from the few suckers who still work for a living. The suckers are punished twice: they provide their own basic needs – even their own safari park tickets! – and then they provide the basic needs of everyone else. Eventually the smarter dray horses will stop hauling the cart and jump in the hay wagon, too. The western welfare state disables the survival instinct – or at least reroutes it from foraging in the forest to foraging on governmental websites. State dependents apply all the cunning, ingenuity and resourcefulness they might otherwise have employed to keep body and soul together in a more Darwinian social landscape to filling out forms, researching on TikTok what phrases to use in Zoom interviews with bureaucrats and maximising motability schemes. This is where I'm supposed to add: 'Of course, advanced societies shouldn't let people starve!' But maybe this ostensibly unquestionable precept has sown the seeds of our destruction. A handful of genuinely hungry people could be usefully cautionary. Western refusal to house, feed and clothe every newcomer might encourage more would-be immigrants to make a go of things where they are. And without handouts, you can bet most of those anxious and depressed young people currently swelling the disability rolls would figure out how to obtain a sandwich before they fainted from malnutrition.
