Friday, November 8, 2024

What if American industries are enticed home?

I found it curious and rather ironic a few days ago, reading a warning from economist David McWilliams, describing how dreadful it will be for Ireland’s economy, if Donald Trump is elected the next US President, because “Trump wants to bring American money, jobs and technology home.”

Mr McWilliams is a well informed economist, but surely he realises that if Trump or any other US leader does start bringing ‘money and jobs’ back to the US, or if some other world event causes a major upset, we’ve been setting ourselves up for this unhappy situation all along?

Did our financial planners really believe that if Ireland decided it was going to put all its financial eggs into one non-Irish basket (all the jobs and finance coming from American-owned companies) that basket could never fall off the kitchen table? Why has the Irish economy become totally dependent on non-Irish-owned firms, relying on the “goodwill” and incentives we offered to ensure that we could reap the benefits and provide jobs ad infinitum, without any risks?

We’ve been doing well, not through our own efforts, but by benefitting from the gravy train enjoyed by major corporations which came here mainly because they could avoid paying their share of taxes in their own countries. Around 970 US companies are directly providing jobs for 210,000 Irish people here and another 168,000 indirect jobs, and Mr McWilliams points out that the total amounts to 14% of all Irish jobs. And the companies spend €41 billion a year, and pay €7 billion in wages. We won’t be boasting about surpluses if we lose a chunk of those jobs.

Are the Americans wrong for saying they need investment and jobs at home, and far more manufactured in America, rather than overseas? Or for saying they’ll put tariffs on whatever comes into their country from abroad, whether its steel or motor cars from China, or other imports?

What has happened to Irish enterprise? For the past four decades and even longer, we’ve moved more and more away from encouraging and supporting manufacturing here by our own Irish companies and businesses, often because we could buy cheaper imported versions of what could be easily produced here. As a result, we have relatively little that is of our own making, other than from Irish agriculture – which we’re sniping at, because supposedly, farming is adding to global warming.

We are depending far too heavily on the companies we’ve enticed here, through the favourable conditions offered to them, to set up big production units and provide jobs, giving us the money allowing us to boast about all we’re achieving. Yet, we can’t even build our own motorways, build anything like enough houses to keep up with the greater demands at present. Likewise with our hospitals and other major building projects, or producing electricity here.

In Westmeath, we’ve every reason to be proud of what is being achieved by home owned businesses like Shay Murtagh’s of Raharney, which can meet exacting demands in the concrete industry, not just in Ireland but far beyond our shores. But we need hundreds of others like the Murtagh enterprise. Instead, successive governments have grown dependent on big tech and big pharma companies that have come here, and which gained real benefits by doing so.

Up to now, its been reaping dividends, but…Currently, we’re facing power supply headaches because of the numbers of huge data centres we’ve encouraged to set up, without taking sufficient account of how data centres gobble up so much of available electricity and water supplies.

Within a few days, we’ll know the outcome of the US election, and should the Republicans emerge winners, we could be facing problems, if it becomes more attractive for US owned companies to locate in America. But we need to face the reality that we’ve long since lost control of our own destiny, because we’ve become dependents. Its definitely not a good idea when the world situation is anything but stable, especially in Europe and the US.

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