A top economic advisor for US president-elect Donald J. Trump is warning Ireland to expect a “flood of companies” to leave its shores under the new president’s new tax regime.
Stephen Moore, formerly a chief economist with US conservative think-tank The Heritage Foundation, spoke with the BBC yesterday on plans to radically reduce taxes for businesses in an attempt to woo US companies away from Ireland and back to the US.
“I believe that when we cut these tax rates – we’re going to cut our business tax rate from roughly 35 percent down to roughly 15- 20 percent – if you do that you are going to see a flood of companies leaving Ireland and Canada and Germany and France and they are going to come back to the United States,” Moore said.
“It is going to have a very high impact on jobs.”
Referring to plans to lower the tax rate as the “single most important thing for our country right now” Moore continued to state the new tax regime would aim to put a halt to the number of US companies relocating overseas to take advantages of lower tax rates.
“There is no question about it, and we see day after day in this country that we are losing our businesses and our corporations,” he said.
“They are effectively renouncing their US citizenship and they are moving to Canada, to Britain, to Ireland, to China and Mexico.
“That is a significant loss of jobs and we want to have the jobs here in the United States, we don’t want to have them go abroad.”
.@realDonaldTrump will ignite an American economic boom. My thoughts: https://t.co/Ig5npRP31G
— Stephen Moore (@StephenMoore) November 4, 2016
Yesterday, Trump praised decisions on the Irish economy in a ten-minute conversation with Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny, confirming with the Irish leader that the US would continue to work with Ireland, and would continue the St. Patrick’s Day tradition of inviting the Taoiseach to the White House.
“I had a very good conversation with the president-elect,” Kenny said.
“He understands Ireland very well, he was complimentary about the decisions made about the economy here. He is looking forward to doing business with Ireland and I asked him specifically about Patrick’s Day, he is looking forward to continuing that tradition over many years.”
Read more: Irish village claims President-elect Donald Trump as one of their own
'The people of America have made a very clear choice'. Taoiseach reacts to Trump's election win pic.twitter.com/NrxGMBZN6C
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) November 9, 2016
There are currently an estimated 50,000 undocumented Irish living in the US and Kenny pledged in a letter to Trump and to his Vice-President Mike Pence to work alongside the US administration on the important issue of immigration.
“And I confirmed to him that we would work very closely with the administration he appoints in January and obviously we will have a lot of discussion about the details that are important for us, as I pointed out in my letter yesterday to him and to the vice-president, the importance of putting immigration back on the administration’s budget, Northern Ireland, the peace process and so on,” Kenny continued.
“I look forward to continuing that conversation again fairly soon.”
Despite the Taoiseach’s comments earlier this year that the campaign being run by Trump was “racist and dangerous”, Kenny released a statement on Wednesday congratulating the real-estate mogul on his victory in which he claimed Trump made controversial comments in the “heat of battle”.
Speaking with RTÉ, however, Irish Labor Party leader Brendan Howlin declared, “I can’t think of any other political event that fills me with as much dread as a Trump presidency.”
“We have to be careful to protect our citizens especially those who are feeling very vulnerable across the United States now. That means giving good legal advice to people who are very anxious right now,” he continued.
“We can’t swallow feelings of concern or airbrush them away. He incited the worst elements of hatred against minorities for his own ends; that is despicable.
Despite this, the Labor Party leader stated that we must continue to meet with the US while not hiding our views on their President: “There are a lot of people in world positions that we don’t agree with. We should articulate our views about them; doesn’t mean we shouldn’t meet them.”
.@BrendanHowlin has commented on the election of @realDonaldTrump. Read his statement below. https://t.co/E5Bjkw3h3X pic.twitter.com/wgo7kRtkgr
— The Labour Party (@labour) November 9, 2016
Read more: Why so many Irish Americans voted for Trump?
H/T: Irish Times
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