Tánaiste Simon Harris had a “constructive and engaging” call with the US secretary of commerce Howard Lutnick on Monday night.
They both hope to meet in person soon and exchanged views on trade policy and the transatlantic economic relationship between Ireland and the US, a spokesperson for Mr Harris said this morning.
“The Tánaiste took the opportunity to congratulate the secretary on his appointment and said he looked forward to working with him and the US administration,” the spokesperson said.
“The Tánaiste said that Ireland values the economic relationship between our two countries and between the US and the EU.”
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They both agreed to keep in close contact, according to the readout of the meeting.
The call comes after Mr Lutnick called Ireland his favourite “tax scam” in recent days. He said Ireland has all of the US multinational technological and pharmaceutical intellectual property (IP) rights and this deprives the United States of tax revenue.
“That’s gotta end,” he told the All-In podcast, aimed at venture capitalists in Washington, DC.
Mr Lutnick erroneously claimed that Ireland had a $60 billion (€55.4 billion) surplus last year. In fact, the budget surplus was €25 billion ($27 billion), which included a once-off €14 billion Apple payment.
He told the podcast: “So we lose two trillion and they make 60. You’d say, Ireland, what do they do? Oh, they have all of our IP for our great tech.
“All our great tech companies and great pharma companies. They all put it there because it’s low tax and they don’t pay us. They pay them. So that’s got to end. So when those things end, tariffs, Trump card, getting rid of tax scams to get fair tax, that’s my trillion.”
Mr Lutnick, a long-time friend of president Donald Trump and one of the biggest advocates of global tariffs, has long targeted Ireland as a potential source of revenue for the US Treasury.
He told Fox News a day after Taoiseach Micheál Martin visited the White House, that Ireland was a “tax scam” and he inflated Ireland’s budgetary surplus further, stating it amounted to $75 billion (€71 billion).
