Cork politicians and business leaders fear 'weeping Wednesday' tariff threat

Cork politicians and the business community have said they are “concerned and anxious” about the tariffs set to be imposed today by US president Donald Trump.

Speaking to The Echo, Cork Fianna Fáil MEP Billy Kelleher said the feeling in the EU was that it would not be a day of ‘liberation’ as described by Mr Trump, but rather a “weeping Wednesday”.

“Everybody is concerned and anxious. We don’t know what the intention of the White House is.

“Is it going to be 20% across all goods and services, or will it be sector-specific or country-specific?

“Some EU countries have no pharma sector at all, so if it’s sector-specific, it will disproportionately affect Ireland,” said Mr Kelleher.

“That’s why it’s important that the European Commission doesn’t have a knee-jerk reaction and start imposing tariffs on American products, because the pharmaceutical industry has a complex supply chain with lots of ingredients coming from the US.

“Tariffing them could lead to a double disproportionate effect on Ireland.”

While Taoiseach Micheál Martin said that nobody knows yet how high the tariffs will be, once imposed, he said it will “be a matter for the Irish economy and the European economy to adapt to that, diversify our markets, look at our competitiveness”.

Order is changing

Mr Martin said: “There are a lot of measures we can take, but fundamentally, the old order is changing in of the economic model.

“We’ve got to try and mitigate it as much as we possibly can. There will be a lot of consultation within the European Union on this issue, to endeavour to get to a strategic response that doesn’t bring more damage.

“Economists are fairly strongly of the view that it needs a calm, collective sort of measured response to make sure we don’t feel damage to ourselves in the process."

Social Democrats TD for Cork South-Central, Pádraig Rice, said that Ireland, as a small open economy with huge trade with the US, is “more exposed than most by President Trump’s global trade war.”

Mr Rice said that Ireland must push to have its voice heard in EU negotiations.

Independent Ireland TD for Cork North-Central, Ken O’Flynn, said that the Government needed to react “swiftly, gently, but forcefully”.

Critical

He was critical of preparations for the imposition of tariffs, telling The Echo that, in his view, the Government has been “very neglectful”.

“This has been coming down the road for a very long time, but the Government hasn’t swung into action at all,” said Mr O’Flynn.

“Now we’re facing D-day with nothing done.”

Cork Chamber chief executive Conor Healy said there was still “quite a bit of uncertainty” as to what will be announced.

“The areas mentioned as potential targets — pharma, food and drink — each of those are really strong fundamental aspects of the Cork economy,” said Mr Healy.

Knock-on-effect

Cork Business Association president Dave O’Brien said that while he hoped the tariffs would be short term, this is still uncertain, adding: “In the main, tariffs will affect the larger companies, but there will, no doubt, be a knock-on effect on SME.”

Mr O’Brien said people could help indigenous Irish businesses by shopping locally, and encouraged businesses to look at different markets in countries such as China and Canada, and in the rest of Europe.

This is what Bhagya Barrett, co-founder of the Rebel City Distillery in Cork, said they are working on now.

“We launched in America two years ago, and have been doing big pushes of our products,” he said.

“Now nobody wants to commit to new orders, there’s so much uncertainty. We have been looking in other markets, exploring Asia, but at the moment our strategy is wait and watch.”